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RtSERVt 

STORAGE 

COLLECTION 







^Edition ftc ITuxc 

The Edition de Luxe is printed fro7n type and will 
be limited to Five Hundred Copies, of which this is 



No. 



GEBBIE and COMPANY. 



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President. 




Secretary. 



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UNIFORM EDITION 



AMERICAN IDEALS 

AND 

Other Essays, Social and Political 



By 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



Volume I. 



PHILADELPHIA 

GEBBIE AND COMPANY 
1903 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Recetved 

SEP 1 »903 

Copyright Entry 
CUSS «^ XXa No, 

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COPY A. 






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Copyright, 1897 
Copyright, 1903 

by 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



This edition of "American Ideals" is issued under special 
arrangement with G. V. Putnam's Sons. 

o 









TO 
HENRY CABOT LODGE 
October, i8gj 



> 



PREFACE 

IT is not difficult to be virtuous in a cloistered 
and negative way. Neither is it difficult to 
succeed, after a fashion, in active life, if one 
is content to disregard the considerations which 
bind honorable and upright men. But it is by no 
means easy to combine honesty and efficiency; 
and yet it is absolutely necessary in order to do 
any work really worth doing. It is not hard, 
while sitting in one's study, to devise admirable 
plans for the betterment of politics and of social 
conditions; but in practice it too often proves 
very hard to make any such plan work at all, no 
matter how imperfectly. Yet the effort must con- 
tinually be made, under penalty of constant retro- 
gression in our political life. 

No one quality or one virtue is enough to in- 
sure success; vigor, honesty, common sense, — all 
are needed. The practical man is merely ren- 
dered more noxious by his practical ability if he 
employs it wrongly, whether from ignorance or 
from lack of morality ; while the doctrinaire, the 
man of theories, whether written or spoken, is 
useless if he cannot also act. 

These essays are written on behalf of the many 



vi Preface 

men who do take an actual part in trying practi- 
cally to bring about the conditions for which we 
somewhat vaguely hope ; on behalf of the under- 
officers in that army which, with much stum- 
bling, halting, and slipping, many mistakes and 
short-comings, and many painful failures, does, 
nevertheless, through weary strife, accomplish 
something toward raising the standard of public 
life. 

We feel that the doer is better than the critic 
and that the man who strives stands far above the 
man who stands aloof, whether he thus stands 
aloof because of pessimism or because of sheer 
weakness. To borrow a simile from the football 
field, we believe that men must play fair, but that 
there must be no shirking, and that success can 
only come to the player who " hits the line hard." 

Sagamore Hill, October, 1897. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER I 
American Ideals i 

CHAPTER II 
True Americanism i6 

CHAPTER III 
The Manly Virtues and Practical Politics 38 

CHAPTER IV 
The College Graduate and Public Life 51 

CHAPTER V 
Phases of State Legislation 68 

CHAPTER VI 
Machine Politics in New York City 112 

CHAPTER VII 
Six Years of Civil-Service Reform 147 

CHAPTER VIII 
Administering the New York Police Force 176 



Vll 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



George Washington . . . Frontispiece 
Etched by W. H. W. Bicknell 

Harvard College ..... 52 

The Capitol at Albany .... 83 

Henry Cabot Lodge 169 



IX 



AMERICAN IDEALS 



CHAPTER I 

AMERICAN IDEALS ^ 

IN his noteworthy book on National Life and 
Character, Mr. Pearson says: "The country- 
men of Chatham and WelHngton, of Wash- 
ington and Lincoln, in short, the citizens of every 
historic state, are richer by great deeds that have 
formed the national character, by winged words 
that have passed into current speech, by the ex- 
amples of lives and labors consecrated to the ser- 
vice of the commonwealth." In other words, 
every great nation owes to the men whose lives 
have formed part of its greatness not merely the 
material effect of what they did, not merely the 
laws they placed upon the statute books or 
the victories they won over armed foes, but also 
the immense but indefinable moral influence pro- 
duced by their deeds and words themselves upon 
the national character. It would be difficult to 
exaggerate the material effects of the careers of 
^ The Forum, February, 1895. 

VOL. I. — I. 



2 American Ideals 

Washington and of Lincoln upon the United 
States. Without Washington we should probably 
never have won oiu" independence of the British 
Crown, and we should almost certainly have failed 
to become a great nation, remaining instead a 
cluster of jangling little communities, drifting 
toward the type of government prevalent in 
Spanish America. Without Lincoln we might 
perhaps have failed to keep the political unity we 
had won ; and even if, as is possible, we had kept 
it, both the struggle by which it was kept and the 
results of this struggle would have been so differ- 
ent that the effect upon our national history could 
not have failed to be profound. Yet the nation's 
debt to these men is not confined to what it owes 
them for its material well-being, incalculable 
though this debt is. Beyond the fact that we are 
an independent and united people, with half a 
continent as our heritage, lies the fact that every 
American is richer by the heritage of the noble 
deeds and noble words of Washington and of Lin- 
coln. Each of us who reads the Gettysburg speech 
or the second inaugural address of the greatest 
American of the nineteenth century, or who studies 
the long campaigns and lofty statesmanship of 
that other American who was even greater, cannot 
but feel within him that lift toward things higher 
and nobler which can never be bestowed by the 
enjoyment of mere material prosperity. 



American Ideals 3 

It is not only the country which these men 
helped to make and helped to save that is ours by 
inheritance; we inherit also all that is best and 
highest in their characters and in their lives. We 
inherit from Lincoln and from the might of Lin- 
coln's generation not merely the freedom of those 
who once were slaves, for we inherit also the fact 
of the freeing of them ; we inherit the glory and 
the honor and the wonder of the deed that was 
done, no less than the actual results of the deed 
when done. The bells that rang at the passage 
of the Emancipation Proclamation still ring in 
Whittier's ode; and as men think over the real 
nature of the triumph then scored for humankind 
their hearts shall ever throb as they cannot over 
the greatest industrial success or over any victory 
won at a less cost than ours. 

The captains and the armies who, after long 
years of dreary campaigning and bloody, stubborn 
fighting, brought to a close the Civil War have 
likewise left us even more than a reimited realm. 
The material effect of what they did is shown in 
the fact that the same flag flies from the Great 
Lakes to the Rio Grande, and all the people of the 
United States are richer because they are one 
people and not many, because they belong to one 
great nation and not to a contemptible knot of 
struggling nationalities. But besides this, besides 
the material results of the Civil War, we are all. 



4 American Ideals 

North and South, incalculably richer for its mem- 
ories. We are the richer for each grim campaign, 
for each hard-fought battle. We are the richer 
for valor displayed alike by those who fought so 
valiantly for the right and by those who, no less 
valiantly, fought for what they deemed the right. 
We have in us nobler capacities for what is great 
and good because of the infinite woe and suffering, 
and because of the splendid ultimate triumph. 

In the same way that we are the better for the 
deeds of our mighty men who have served the 
nation well, so we are the worse for the deeds and 
the words of those who have striven to bring evil 
on the land. Most fortunately we have been free 
from the peril of the most dangerous of all ex- 
amples. We have not had to fight the influence 
exerted over the minds of eager and ambitious men 
by the career of the military adventurer who heads 
some successful revolutionary or separatist move- 
ment. No man works such incalculable woe to a 
free country as he who teaches young men that 
one of the paths to glory, renown, and temporal 
success lies along the line of armed resistance to 
the Government, of its attempted overthrow. 

Yet if we are free from the peril of this example, 
there are other perils from which' we are not free. 
All through our career we have had to war against 
a tendency to regard, in the individual and the 
nation alike, as most important, things that are of 



American Ideals 5 

comparatively little importance. We rightfully 
value success, but sometimes we overvalue it, for 
we tend to forget that success may be obtained by 
means which should make it abhorred and de- 
spised by every honorable man. One section of 
the community deifies as " smartness" the kind of 
trickery which enables a man without conscience 
to succeed in the financial or political world. 
Another section of the community deifies violent 
homicidal lawlessness. If ever our people as a 
whole adopt these views, then we shall have proved 
that we are unworthy of the heritage our fore- 
fathers left us; and our country will go down in 
ruin. 

The people that do harm in the end are not the 
wrong-doers whom all execrate ; they are the men 
who do not do quite as much wrong, but who are 
applauded instead of being execrated. The career 
of Benedict Arnold has done us no harm as a 
nation because of the universal horror it inspired. 
The men who have done us harm are those who 
have advocated disunion, but have done it so that 
they have been enabled to keep their political 
position; who have advocated repudiation of 
debts, or other financial dishonesty, but have kept 
their standing in the community ; who preach the 
doctrines of anarchy, but refrain from action that 
will bring them within the pale of the law; for 
these men lead thousands astray by the fact that 



6 American Ideals 

they go unpunished or even rewarded for their 
misdeeds. 

It is unhappily true that we inherit the evil as 
well as the good done by those who have gone 
before us, and in the one case as in the other the 
influence extends far beyond the mere material 
effects. The foes of order harm quite as much by 
example as by what they actually accomplish. 
So it is with the equally dangerous criminals of the 
wealthy classes. The conscienceless stock specu- 
lator who acquires wealth by swindling his fellows, 
by debauching judges and corrupting legislatures, 
and who ends his days with the reputation of being 
among the richest men in America, exerts over the 
minds of the rising generation an influence worse 
than that of the average murderer or bandit, be- 
cause his career is even more dazzling in its suc- 
cess, and even more dangerous in its effects upon 
the community. Any one who reads the essays 
of Charles Francis Adams and Henry Adams, en- 
titled A Chapter of Erie and The Gold Conspiracy 
in New York, will read about the doings of men 
whose influence for evil upon the community is 
more potent than that of any band of anarchists 
or train robbers. 

There are other members of our mercantile 
community who, being perfectly honest them- 
selves, nevertheless do almost as much damage 
as the dishonest. The professional labor agitator, 



American Ideals 7 

with all his recldess incendiarism of speech, can 
do no more harm than the narrow, hard, selfish 
merchant or manufacturer who deliberately sets 
himself to keep the laborers he employs in a con- 
dition of dependence which will render them help- 
less to combine against him; and every such 
merchant or manufacturer who rises to suffiicent 
eminence leaves the record of his name and deeds 
as a legacy of evil to all who come after him. 

But of course the worst foes of America are the 
foes to that orderly liberty without which our Re- 
public must speedily perish. The reckless labor 
agitator who arouses the mob to riot and blood- 
shed is in the last analysis the most dangerous of 
the workingman's enemies. This man is a real 
peril; and so is his sympathizer, the legislator 
who, to catch votes, denounces the judiciary and 
the military because they put down mobs. We 
Americans have, on the whole, a right to be opti- 
mists ; but it is mere folly to blind ourselves to the 
fact that there are some black clouds on the hori- 
zon of our future. 

During the summer of 1894 every American 
capable of thinking must at times have pondered 
very gravely over certain features of the national 
character which were brought into unpleasant 
prominence by the course of events. The dema- 
gogue, in all his forms, is as characteristic an evil 
of a free society as the courtier is of a despotism ; 



8 American Ideals 

and the attitude of many of our public men at the 
time of the great strike in July, 1894, was such as 
to call down on their heads the hearty condemna- 
tion of every American who wishes well to his 
coimtry. It would be difficult to overestimate 
the damage done by the example and action of a 
man like Governor Altgeld of Illinois. Whether 
he is honest or not in his beliefs is not of the 
slightest consequence. He is as emphatically the 
foe of decent government as Tweed himself, and is 
capable of doing far more damage than Tweed. 
The Governor, who began his career by pardoning 
anarchists, and whose most noteworthy feat since 
was his bitter and undignified, but fortunately 
futile, campaign against the election of the up- 
right judge who sentenced the anarchists, is the 
foe of every true American and is the foe particu- 
larly of every honest workingman. With such a 
man it was to be expected that he should in time 
of civic commotion act as the foe of the law-abid- 
ing and the friend of the lawless classes, and en- 
deavor, in company with the lowest and most 
abandoned office-seeking politicians, to prevent 
proper measures being taken to prevent riot and 
to punish the rioters. Had it not been for the 
admirable action of the Federal Government, 
Chicago would have seen a repetition of what 
occurred during the Paris Commune, while Illinois 
would have been torn by a fierce social war ; and 



American Ideals 9 

for all the horrible waste of life that this would 
have entailed Governor Altgeld would have been 
primarily responsible. It was a most fortunate 
thing that the action at Washington was so quick 
and so emphatic. Senator Davis of Minnesota 
set the key of patriotism at the time when men 
were still puzzled and hesitated. The President 
and Attorney-General Olney acted with equal wis- 
dom and courage, and the danger was averted. 
The completeness of the victory of the Federal 
authorities, representing the cause of law and 
order, has been perhaps one reason why it was so 
soon forgotten ; and now not a few short-sighted 
people need to be reminded that when we were on 
the brink of an almost terrific explosion the Gover- 
nor of Illinois did his best to work to this country 
a measure of harm as great as any ever planned by 
Benedict Arnold, and that we were saved by the 
resolute action of the Federal judiciary and of 
the regular army. Moreover, Governor Altgeld, 
though pre-eminent, did not stand alone on his 
unenviable prominence. Governor Waite of Col- 
orado stood with him. Most of the Populist gov- 
ernors of the Western States, and the Republican 
governor of California and the Democratic gover- 
nor of North Dakota, shared the shame with him ; 
and it makes no difference whether in catering to 
riotous mobs they paid heed to their own timidity 
and weakness, or to that spirit of blatant dema- 



lo American Ideals 

gogism which, more than any other, jeopardizes 
the existence of free institutions. On the other 
hand, the action of the then Governor of Ohio, Mr. 
McKinley, entitled him to the gratitude of all good 
citizens. 

Every true American, every man who thinks, 
and who if the occasion comes is ready to act, may 
do well to ponder upon the evil wrought by the 
lawlessness of the disorderly classes when once 
they are able to elect their own chiefs to power. 
If the government generally got into the hands of 
men such as Altgeld, the Republic would go to 
pieces in a year; and it would be right that it 
should go to pieces, for the election of such men 
shows that the people electing them are unfit to 
be entrusted with self-government. 

There are, however, plenty of wrong-doers be- 
sides those who commit the overt act. Too much 
cannot be said against the men of wealth who 
sacrifice everything to getting wealth. There is 
not in the world a more ignoble character than the 
mere money-getting American, insensible to every 
duty, regardless of every principle, bent only on 
amassing a fortune, and putting his fortune only 
to the basest uses — whether these uses be to spec- 
ulate in stocks and wreck railroads himself, or to 
allow his son to lead a life of foolish and expensive 
idleness and gross debauchery, or to purchase 
some scoundrel of high social position, foreign or 



American Ideals n 

native, for his daughter. Such a man is only the 
more dangerous if he occasionally does some deed 
like founding a college or endowing a church, 
which makes those good people who are also fool- 
ish forget his real iniquity. These men are equally 
careless of the workingmen, whom they oppress, 
and of the State, whose existence they imperil. 
There are not very many of them, but there is a 
very great number of men who approach more or 
less closely to the type, and, just in so far as they 
do so approach, they are curses to the country. 
The man who is content to let politics go from bad 
to worse, jesting at the corruption of politicians, 
the man who is content to see the maladministra- 
tion of justice without an immediate and resolute 
effort to reform it, is shirking his duty and is pre- 
paring the way for infinite woe in the future. 
Hard, brutal indifference to the right, and an 
equally brutal short-sightedness as to the inevit- 
able results of corruption and injustice, are baleful 
beyond measure; and yet they are characteristic 
of a great many Americans who think themselves 
perfectly respectable, and who are considered 
thriving, prosperous men by their easy-going fel- 
low-citizens. 

Another class, merging into this, and only less 
dangerous, is that of the men whose ideals are 
purely material. These are the men who are will- 
ing to go for good government when they think it 



12 American Ideals 

will pay, but who measure everything by the shop- 
till, the people who are unable to appreciate any 
quality that is not a mercantile commodity, who 
do not understand that a poet may do far more 
for a country than the owner of a nail factory, 
who do not realize that no amount of commercial 
prosperity can supply the lack of the heroic vir- 
tues, or can in itself solve the terrible social prob- 
lems which all the civilized world is now facing. 
The mere materialist is, above all things, short- 
sighted. In a recent article Mr. Edward Atkinson 
casually mentioned that the regular army could 
now render the country no "effective or useful 
service." Two months before this sapient remark 
was printed the regular army had saved Chicago 
from the fate of Paris in 1870 and had prevented a 
terrible social war in the West. At the end of 
this article Mr. Atkinson indulged in a curious 
rhapsody against the navy, denouncing its exist- 
ence and being especially wrought up, not because 
war- vessels take life, but because they "destroy 
commerce." To men of a certain kind, trade and 
property are far more sacred than life or honor, of 
far more consequence than the great thoughts and 
lofty emotions which alone make a nation mighty. 
They believe, with a faith almost touching in its 
utter feebleness, that " the Angel of Peace, draped 
in a garment of untaxed calico," has given her 
final message to men when she has implored them 



American Ideals 13 

to devote all their energies to producing oleomar- 
garine at a quarter of a cent less a firkin, or to 
importing woollens for a fraction less than they 
can be made at home. These solemn prattlers 
strive after an ideal in which they shall happily 
unite the imagination of a green-grocer with the 
heart of a Bengalee baboo. They are utterly in- 
capable of feeling one thrill of generous emotion, 
or the slightest throb of that pulse which gives to 
the world statesmen, patriots, warriors, and poets, 
and which makes a nation other than a cumberer 
of the world's surface. In the concluding page of 
his article, Mr. Atkinson, complacently advancing 
his panacea, his quack cure-all, says that "all evil 
powers of the world will go down before" a policy 
of "reciprocity of trade without obstruction"! 
Fatuity can go no farther. 

No Populist who wishes a currency based on 
corn and cotton stands in more urgent need of ap- 
plied common sense than does the man who be- 
lieves that the adoption of any policy, no matter 
what, in reference to our foreign commerce, will 
cut that tangled knot of social well-being and 
misery at which the fingers of the London free- 
trader clutch as helplessly as those of the Berlin 
protectionist. Such a man represents individu- 
ally an almost imponderable element in the work 
and thought of the community ; but in the aggre- 
gate he stands for a real danger, because he stands 



14 American Ideals 

for a feeling evident of late years among many re- 
spectable people. The people who pride themselves 
upon having a purely commercial ideal are appar- 
ently unaware that such an ideal is as essentially 
mean and sordid as any in the world, and that no 
bandit community of the Middle Ages can have led 
a more unlovely life than would be the life of men to 
whom trade and manufactures were everything, and 
to whom such words as national honor and glory, 
as courage and daring, and loyalty and unselfish- 
ness, had become meaningless. The merely mate- 
rial, the merely commercial ideal, the ideal of the 
men "whose fatherland is the till," is in its very 
essence debasing and lowering. It is as true now 
as ever it was that no man and no nation sjiall live 
by bread alone. Thrift and industry are indi- 
spensable virtues ; but they are not all-sufficient. 
We must base our appeals for civic and national 
betterment on nobler grounds than those of mere 
business expediency. 

We have examples enough and to spare that 
tend to evil; nevertheless, for our good fortune, 
the men who have most impressed themselves 
upon the thought of the nation have left behind 
them careers the influence of which must tell for 
good. The imscrupulous speculator who rises to 
enormous wealth by swindling his neighbor; the 
capitalist who oppresses the workingman; the 
agitator who wrongs the workingman yet more 



American Ideals 15 

deeply by trying to teach him to rely not upon 
himself, but partly upon the charity of individuals 
or of the state and partly upon mob violence ; the 
man in public life who is a demagogue or corrupt, 
and the newspaper writer who fails to attack him 
because of his corruption, or who slanderously 
assails him when he is honest ; the political leader 
who, cursed by some obliquity of moral or of men- 
tal vision, seeks to produce sectional or social 
strife — all these, though important in their day, 
have hitherto failed to leave any lasting impress 
upon the life of the nation. The men who have 
profoundly influenced the growth of our national 
character have been in most cases precisely those 
men whose influence was for the best and was 
strongly felt as antagonistic to the worst tendency 
of the age. The great writers, who have written 
in prose or verse, have done much for us. The 
great orators whose burning words on behalf of 
liberty, of union, of honest government, have rung 
through our legislative halls, have done even more. 
Most of all has been done by the men who have 
spoken to us through deeds and not words, or 
whose words have gathered their especial charm 
and significance because they came from men who 
did speak in deeds. A nation's greatness lies in 
its possibility of achievement in the present, and 
nothing helps it more than the consciousness of 
achievement in the past. 



CHAPTER II 

TRUE AMERICANISM ^ 

PATRIOTISM was once defined as "the last 
refuge of a scoundrel" ; and somebody has 
recently remarked that when Dr. Johnson 
gave this definition he was ignorant of the infinite 
possibilities contained in the word "reform." Of 
course, both gibes were quite justifiable, in so far 
as they were aimed at people who use noble names 
to cloak base purposes. Equally, of course, the 
man shows little wisdom and a low sense of duty 
who fails to see that love of country is one of the 
elemental virtues, even though scoundrels play 
upon it for their own selfish ends ; and, inasmuch 
as abuses continually grow up in civic life as in all 
other kinds of life, the statesman is indeed a weak- 
liner who hesitates to reform these abuses because 
the word " reform " is often on the lips of men who 
are silly or dishonest. 

What is true of patriotism and reform is true 
also of Americanism. There are plenty of scoun- 
drels always ready to try to belittle reform move- 
ments or to bolster up existing iniquities in the 
name of Americanism ; but this does not alter the 

^ The Forum, April, 1894. 
i6 



True Americanism 17 

fact that the man who can do most in this country 
is and must be the man whose Americanism is 
most sincere and intense. Outrageous though it 
is to use a noble idea as the cloak for evil, it is 
still worse to assail the noble idea itself because 
it can thus be used. The men who do iniquity 
in the name of patriotism, of reform, of American- 
ism, are merely one small division of the class that 
has always existed and will always exist, — the 
class of hypocrites and demagogues, the class 
that is always prompt to steal the watchwords of 
righteousness and use them in the interests of 
evildoing. 

The stoutest and truest Americans are the very 
men who have the least sympathy with the people 
who invoke the spirit of Americanism to aid what 
is vicious in our government or to throw ob- 
stacles in the way of those who strive to reform it. 
It is contemptible to oppose a movement for good 
because that movement has already succeeded 
somewhere else, or to champion an existing abuse 
because our people have always been wedded to it. 
To appeal to national prejudice against a given 
reform movement is in every way unworthy and 
silly. It is as childish to denounce free trade be- 
cause England has adopted it as to advocate it for 
the same reason. It is eminently proper, in deal- 
ing with the tariff, to consider the effect of tariff 
legislation in time past upon other nations as well 

VOL. I.— 2. 



1 8 American Ideals 

as the effect upon our own; but in drawing con- 
clusions it is in the last degree foolish to try to 
excite prejudice against one system because it is 
in vogue in some given country, or to try to excite 
prejudice in its favor because the economists of 
that country have found that it was suited to 
their own peculiar needs. In attempting to solve 
our difficult problem of municipal government it 
is mere folly to refuse to profit by whatever is 
good in the examples of Manchester and Berlin 
because these cities are foreign, exactly as it is 
mere folly blindly to copy their examples without 
reference to our own totally different conditions. 
As for the absurdity of declaiming against civil- 
service reform, for instance, as " Chinese," because 
written examinations have been used in China, it 
would be quite as wise to declaim against gun- 
powder because it was first utilized by the same 
people. In short, the man who, whether from 
mere dull fatuity or from an active interest in mis- 
government, tries to appeal to American prejudice 
against things foreign, so as to induce Americans 
to oppose any measure for good, should be looked 
on by his fellow-countrymen with the heartiest 
contempt. So much for the men who appeal to 
the spirit of Americanism to sustain us in wrong- 
doing. But we must never let our contempt for 
these men blind us to the nobility of the idea 
which they strive to degrade. 



True Americanism 19 

We Americans have many grave problems to 
solve, many threatening evils to fight, and many 
deeds to do, if, as we hope and believe, we have 
the wisdom, the strength, the courage, and the 
virtue to do them. But we must face facts as 
they are. We must neither surrender ourselves 
to a foolish optimism, nor succumb to a timid 
and ignoble pessimism. Our nation is that one 
among all the nations of the earth which holds in 
its hands the fate of the coming years. We enjoy 
exceptional advantages, and are menaced by 
exceptional dangers; and all signs indicate that 
we shall either fail greatly or succeed greatly. I 
firmly believe that we shall succeed ; but we must 
not foolishly blink the dangers by which we are 
threatened, for that is the way to fail. On the 
contrary, we must soberly set to work to find out 
all we can about the existence and extent of every 
evil, and must then attack it with unyielding 
resolution. There are many such evils, and each 
must be fought after a separate fashion ; yet there 
is one quality which we must bring to the solution 
of every problem, — that is, an intense and fervid 
Americanism. We shall never be successful over 
the dangers that confront us; we shall never 
achieve true greatness, nor reach the lofty ideal 
which the founders and preservers of our mighty 
Federal Republic have set before us, unless we are 
Americans in heart and soul, in spirit and purpose, 



20 American Ideals 

keenly alive to the responsibility implied in the 
very name of American, and proud beyond meas- 
ure of the glorious privilege of bearing it. 

There are two or three sides to the question of 
Americanism, and two or three senses in which the 
word "Americanism" can be used to express the 
antithesis of what is unwholesome and undesirable. 
In the first place we wish to be broadly American 
and national, as opposed to being local or sec- 
tional. We do not wish, in politics, in literature, 
or in art, to develop that unwholesome parochial 
spirit, that over-exaltation of the little community 
at the expense of the great nation, which produces 
what has been described as the patriotism of the 
village, the patriotism of the belfry. Politically, 
the indulgence of this spirit was the chief cause of 
the calamities which befell the ancient republics 
of Greece, the medieval republics of Italy, and the 
petty states of Germany as it was in the last cen- 
tury. It is this spirit of provincial patriotism, this 
inability to take a view of broad adhesion to the 
whole nation that has been the chief among 
the causes that have produced such anarchy in the 
South American States, and which have resulted 
in presenting to us, not one great Spanish-Ameri- 
can federal nation stretching from the Rio Grande 
to Cape Horn, but a squabbling multitude of 
revolution-ridden States, not one of which stands 
even in the second rank as a power. However, 



True Americanism 21 

politically this question of American nationality 
has been settled once for all. We are no longer 
in danger of repeating in our history the shameful 
and contemptible disasters that have befallen the 
Spanish possessions on this continent since they 
threw off the yoke of Spain. Indeed there is, all 
through our life, very much less of this parochial 
spirit than there was formerly. Still, there is an 
occasional outcropping here and there; and it is 
just as well that we should keep steadily in mind 
the futility of talking of a Northern literature or a 
Southern literature, an Eastern or a Western 
school of art or science. Joel Chandler Harris is 
emphatically a national writer ; so is Mark Twain. 
They do not write merely for Georgia or Missouri 
or California any more than for Illinois or Connec- 
ticut ; they write as Americans and for all people 
who can read English. St. Gaudens lives in New 
York ; but his work is just as distinctive of Boston 
or Chicago. It is of very great consequence that 
we should have a full and ripe literary develop- 
ment in the United States, but it is not of the 
least consequence whether New York, or Boston, 
or Chicago, or San Francisco becomes the literary 
or artistic centre of the United States. 

There is a second side to this question of a 
broad Americanism, however. The patriotism of 
the village or the belfry is bad, but the lack of all 
patriotism is even worse. There are philosophers 



22 American Ideals 

who assure us that, in the future, patriotism will 
be regarded not as a virtue at all, but merely as a 
mental stage in the journey toward a state of feel- 
ing when our patriotism will include the whole 
human race and all the world. This may be so; 
but the age of which these philosophers speak is 
still several aeons distant. In fact, philosophers 
of this type are so very advanced that they are of 
no practical service to the present generation. It 
may be that in ages so remote that we cannot now 
understand any of the feelings of those who will 
dwell in them, patriotism will no longer be re- 
garded as a virtue, exactly as it may be that in 
those remote ages people will look down upon and 
disregard monogamic marriage ; but as things now 
are and have been for two or three thousand years 
past, and are likely to be for two or three thousand 
years to come, the words "home" and "country" 
mean a great deal. Nor do they show any ten- 
dency to lose their significance. At present, 
treason, like adultery, ranks as one of the worst 
of all possible crimes. 

One may fall very far short of treason and yet 
be an undesirable citizen in the community. The 
man who becomes Europeanized, who loses his 
power of doing good work on this side of the water, 
and who loses his love for his native land, is not a 
traitor; but he is a silly and undesirable citizen. 
He is as emphatically a noxious element in our 



True Americanism 23 

body politic as is the man who comes here from 
abroad and remains a foreigner. Nothing will 
more quickly or more surely disqualify a man 
from doing good work in the world than the ac- 
quirement of that flaccid habit of mind which its 
possessors style cosmopolitanism. 

It is not only necessary to Americanize the im- 
migrants of foreign birth who settle among us, but 
it is even more necessary for those among us who 
are by birth and descent already Americans not to 
throw away our birthright, and, with incredible 
and contemptible folly, wander back to bow down 
before the alien gods whom our forefathers for- 
sook. It is hard to believe that there is any ne- 
cessity to warn Americans that, when they seek 
to model themselves on the lines of other civiliza- 
tions, they make themselves the butts of all right- 
thinking men; and yet the necessity certainly 
exists to give this warning to many of our citizens 
who pride themselves on their standing in the 
world of art and letters, or, perchance, on what 
they would style their social leadership in the com- 
munity. It is always better to be an original than 
an imitation, even when the imitation is of some- 
thing better than the original ; but what shall we 
say of the fool who is content to be an imitation of 
something worse? Even if the weaklings who 
seek to be other than Americans were right in 
deeming other nations to be better than their own, 



24 American Ideals 

the fact yet remains that to be a first-class Ameri- 
can is fifty-fold better than to be a second-class 
imitation of a Frenchman or Englishman. As a 
matter of fact, however, those of our countrymen 
who do believe in American inferiority are always 
individuals who, however cultivated, have some 
organic weakness in their moral or mental make- 
up; and the great mass of our people, who are 
robustly patriotic, and who have sound, healthy 
minds, are justified in regarding these feeble rene- 
gades with a half-impatient and half-amused 
scorn. 

We believe in waging relentless war on rank- 
growing evils of all kinds, and it makes no differ- 
ence to us if they happen to be of purely native 
growth. We grasp at any good, no matter whence 
it comes. We do not accept the evil attendant 
upon another system of government as an ade- 
quate excuse for that attendant upon our own; 
the fact that the courtier is a scamp does not ren- 
der the demagogue any the less a scoundrel. But 
it remains true that, in spite of all our faults and 
shortcomings, no other land offers such glorious 
possibilities to the man able to take advantage of 
them, as does ours ; it remams true that no one of 
our people can do any work really worth doing 
unless he does it primarily as an American. It is 
because certain classes of our people still retain 
their spirit of colonial dependence on, and exag- 



True Americanism 25 

gerated deference to, European opinion, that they 
fail to accomphsh what they ought to. It is pre- 
cisely along the lines where we have worked most 
independently that we have accomplished the 
greatest results; and it is in those professions 
where there has been no servility to, but merely 
wise profiting by, foreign experience, that we have 
produced our greatest men. Our soldiers and 
statesmen and orators ; our explorers, our wilder- 
ness-winners, and commonwealth builders; the 
men who have made our laws and seen that they 
were executed; and the other men whose energy 
and ingenuity have created our marvellous mate- 
rial prosperity, — all these have been men who have 
drawn wisdom from the experience of every age 
and nation, but who have nevertheless thought, 
and worked, and conquered, and lived, and died, 
purely as Americans ; and on the whole they have 
done better work than has been done in any other 
country during the short period of our national 
life. 

On the other hand, it is in those professions 
where our people have striven hardest to mould 
themselves in conventional European forms that 
they have succeeded least ; and this holds true to 
the present day, the failure being, of course, most 
conspicuous where the man takes up his abode in 
Europe; where he becomes a second-rate Euro- 
pean, because he is over-civilized, over-sensitive, 



26 American Ideals 

over-refined, and has lost the hardihood and manly- 
courage by which alone he can conquer in the keen 
struggle of our national life. Be it remembered, 
too, that this same being does not really become a 
European ; he only ceases being an American, and 
becomes nothing. He throws away a great prize 
for the sake of a lesser one, and does not even get 
the lesser one. The painter who goes to Paris, 
not merely to get two or three years' thorough 
training in his art, but with the deliberate purpose 
of taking up his abode there, and with the inten- 
tion of following in the ruts worn deep by ten 
thousand earlier travellers, instead of striking ofiE 
to rise or fall on a new line, thereby forfeits all 
chance of doing the best work. He must content 
himself with aiming at that kind of mediocrity 
which consists in doing fairly well what has already 
been done better ; and he usually never even sees 
the grandeur and picturesqueness lying open be- 
fore the eyes of every man who can read the book 
of America's past and the book of America's 
present. Thus it is with the undersized man 
of letters, who flees his country because he, with 
his delicate, efleminate sensitiveness, finds the 
conditions of life on this side of the water crude 
and raw ; in other words, because he finds that 
he cannot play a man's part among men, and so 
goes where he will be sheltered from the winds 
that harden stouter souls. This emigre may write 



True Americanism 27 

graceful and pretty verses, essays, novels ; but he 
will never do work to compare with that of his 
brother, who is strong enough to stand on his own 
feet and do his work as an American. Thus it is 
with the scientist who spends his youth in a Ger- 
man imiversity, and can thenceforth work only in 
the fields already fifty times furrowed by the 
German ploughs. Thus it is with that most 
foolish of parents who sends his children to be 
educated abroad, not knowing — what every clear- 
sighted man from Washington and Jay down has 
known — that the American who is to make his 
way in America should be brought up among his 
fellow-Americans. It is among the people who 
like to consider themselves, and, indeed, to a large 
extent are, the leaders of the so-called social world, 
especially in some of the northeastern cities, that 
this thoroughly provincial spirit of admiration for 
things foreign, and inability to stand on one's own 
feet, becomes most evident and most despicable. 
We believe in every kind of honest and lawful 
pleasure, so long as the getting it is not made 
man's chief business; and we believe heartily in 
the good that can be done by men of leisure who 
work hard in their leisure, whether at politics or 
philanthropy, Hterature or art. But a leisure 
class whose leisure simply means idleness is a curse 
to the community, and in so far as its members 
distinguish themselves chiefly by aping the worst 



28 American Ideals 

— not the best — traits of similar people across the 
water, they become both comic and noxious ele- 
ments of the body politic. 

The third sense in which the word "American- 
ism" may be employed is with reference to the 
Americanizing of the new-comers to our shores. 
We must Americanize them in every way, in 
speech, in political ideas and principles, and in 
their way of looking at the relations between 
Church and State. We welcome the German or 
the Irishman who becomes an American. We 
have no use for the German or Irishman who re- 
mains such. We do not wish German-Americans 
and Irish-Americans who figure as such in our 
social and political life ; we want only Americans, 
and, provided they are such, we do not care 
whether they are of native or of Irish or of German 
ancestry. We have no room in any healthy 
American community for a German-American 
vote or an Irish-American vote, and it is contemp- 
tible demagogy to put planks into any party plat- 
form with the purpose of catching such a vote. 
We have no room for any people who do not act 
and vote simply as Americans and as nothing else. 
Moreover, we have as little use for people who 
carry religious prejudices into our politics as for 
those who carry prejudices of caste or nationality. 
We stand unalterably in favor of the public-school 
system in its entirety. We believe that English 



True Americanism 29 

and no other language is that in which all the 
school exercises should be conducted. We are 
against any division of the school fund, and against 
any appropriation of public money for sectarian 
purposes. We are against any recognition whatever 
by the State in any shape or form of State-aided 
parochial schools. But we are equally opposed to 
any discrimination against or for a man because of 
his creed. We demand that all citizens, Protes- 
tant and Catholic, Jew and Gentile, shall have fair 
treatment in every way ; that all alike shall have 
their rights guaranteed them. The very reasons 
that make us unqualified in our opposition to 
State-aided sectarian schools make us equally bent 
that, in the management of our public schools, the 
adherents of each creed shall be given exact and 
equal justice, wholly without regard to their re- 
ligious affiliations ; that trustees, superintendents, 
teachers, scholars, all alike, shall be treated with- 
out any reference whatsoever to the creed they 
profess. We maintain that it is an outrage, in 
voting for a man for any position, whether State 
or national, to take into account his religious faith, 
provided only he is a good American. When a 
secret society does what in some places the Ameri- 
can Protective Association seems to have done, and 
tries to proscribe Catholics both politically and 
socially, the members of such society show that 
they themselves are as utterly un-American, as 



30 American Ideals 

alien to our school of political thought, as the 
worst immigrants who land on our shores. Their 
conduct is equally base and contemptible; they 
are the worst foes of our public-school system, 
because they strengthen the hands of its ultra- 
montane enemies ; they should receive the hearty 
condemnation of all Americans who are truly 
patriotic. 

The mighty tide of immigration to our shores 
has brought in its train much of good and much of 
evil ; and whether the good or the evil shall pre- 
dominate depends mainly on whether these new- 
comers do or do not throw themselves heartily 
into our national life, cease to be European, and 
become Americans like the rest of us. More than 
a third of the people of the Northern States are of 
foreign birth or parentage. An immense number 
of them have become completely Americanized, 
and these stand on exactly the same plane as the 
descendants of any Puritan, Cavalier, or Knicker- 
bocker among us, and do their full and honorable 
share of the nation's work. But where immi- 
grants or the sons of immigrants do not heartily 
and in good faith throw in their lot with us, but 
cling to the speech, the customs, the ways of life, 
and the habits of thought of the Old World which 
they have left, they thereby harm both themselves 
and us. If they remain alien elements, unassimi- 
lated, and with interests separate from ours, they 



True Americanism 31 

are mere obstructions to the current of our na- 
tional life, and, moreover, can get no good from 
it themselves. In fact, though we ourselves also 
suffer from their perversity, it is they who really 
suffer most. It is an immense benefit to the 
European immigrant to change him into an 
American citizen. To bear the name of American 
is to bear the most honorable of titles ; and who- 
ever does not so believe has no business to bear 
the name at all, and, if he comes from Europe, the 
sooner he goes back there the better. Besides, 
the man who does not become Americanized never- 
theless fails to remain a European and becomes 
nothing at all. The immigrant cannot possibly 
remain what he was, or continue to be a member 
of the Old- World society. If he tries to retain his 
old language, in a few generations it becomes a 
barbarous jargon; if he tries to retain his old cus- 
toms and ways of life, in a few generations he 
becomes an uncouth boor. He has cut himself 
off from the Old World and cannot retain his con- 
nection with it ; and if he wishes ever to amount 
to anything he must throw himself heart and soul, 
and without reservation, into the new life to 
which he has come. It is urgently necessary to 
check and regulate our immigration by much more 
drastic laws than now exist; and this should be 
done both to keep out laborers who tend to de- 
press the labor market, and to keep out races 



32 American Ideals 

which do not assimilate readily with our own, and 
unworthy individuals of all races — not only crim- 
inals, idiots, and paupers, but anarchists of the 
Most and O' Donovan Rossa type. 

From his own standpoint, it is beyond all ques- 
tion the wise thing for the immigrant to become 
thoroughly Americanized. Moreover, from our 
standpoint, we have a right to demand it. We 
freely extend the hand of welcome and of good- 
fellowship to every man, no matter what his creed 
or birthplace, who comes here honestly intent on 
becoming a good United States citizen like the 
rest of us ; but we have a right, and it is our duty 
to demand that he shall indeed become so, and 
shall not confuse the issues with which we are 
struggling by introducing among us Old- World 
quarrels and prejudices. There are certain ideas 
which he must give up. For instance, he must 
learn that American life is incompatible with the 
existence of any form of anarchy, or of any secret 
society having murder for its aim, whether at 
home or abroad ; and he must learn that we exact 
full religious toleration and the complete separa- 
tion of Church and State. Moreover, he must not 
bring in his Old-World religious race and national 
antipathies, but must merge them into love for 
our common country, and must take pride in the 
things which we can all take pride in. He must 
revere only our flag; not only must it come first, 



True Americanism 33 

but no other flag should even come second. He 
must learn to celebrate Washington's birthday 
rather than that of the Queen or Kaiser, and the 
Fourth of July instead of St. Patrick's Day. Our 
political and social questions must be settled on 
their own merits, and not complicated by quarrels 
between England and Ireland, or France and Ger- 
many, with which we have nothing to do ; it is an 
outrage to fight an American political campaign 
with reference to questions of European politics. 
Above all, the immigrant must learn to talk and 
think and be United States. 

The immigrant of to-day can learn much from 
the experience of the immigrants of the past, who 
came to America prior to the Revolutionary War. 
We were then already, what we are now, a people 
of mixed blood. Many of our most illustrious 
Revolutionary names were borne by men of Hugue- 
not blood — Jay, Sevier, Marion, Laurens. But 
the Huguenots were, on the whole, the best immi- 
grants we have ever received; sooner than any 
other, and more completely, they became Ameri- 
can in speech, conviction, and thought. The Hol- 
landers took longer than the Huguenots to become 
completely assimilated; nevertheless they in the 
end became so, immensely to their own advan- 
tage. One of the leading Revolutionary generals, 
Schuyler, and one of the Presidents of the United 
States, Van Buren, were of Dutch blood ; but they 

VOL. I. — 3. 



34 American Ideals 

rose to their positions, the highest in the land, 
because they had become Americans and had 
ceased being Hollanders. If they had remained 
members of an alien body, cut off by their speech 
and customs and belief from the rest of the Ameri- 
can commimity, Schuyler would have lived his life 
as a boorish, provincial squire, and Van Buren 
would have ended his days a small tavern-keeper. 
So it is with the Germans of Pennsylvania. Those 
of them who became Americanized have furnished 
to our history a multitude of honorable names, 
from the days of the Miihlenbergs onward; but 
those who did not become Americanized form to 
the present day an unimportant body, of no sig- 
nificance in American existence. So it is with the 
Irish, who gave to Revolutionary annals such 
names as Carroll and Sullivan, and to the Civil 
War men like Sheridan — men who were Ameri- 
cans and nothing else: while the Irish who re- 
main such and busy themselves solely with alien 
politics, can have only an unhealthy influence 
upon American life, and can never rise as do their 
compatriots who become straightout Americans. 
Thus it has ever been with all people who have 
come hither, of whatever stock or blood. The 
same thing is true of the churches. A church 
which remains foreign in language or spirit is 
doomed. 

But I wish to be distinctly understood on one 



True Americanism 35 

point. Americanism is a question of spirit, con- 
viction, and purpose, not of creed or birthplace. 
The poHtician who bids for the Irish or German 
vote, or the Irishman or German who votes as an 
Irishman or German, is despicable, for all citizens 
of this commonwealth should vote solely as Ameri- 
cans ; but he is not a whit less despicable than the 
voter who votes against a good American, merely 
because that American happens to have been bom 
in Ireland or Germany. Know-nothingism, in any 
form, is as utterly un-American as foreignism. It 
is a base outrage to oppose a man because of his 
religion or birthplace, and all good citizens will 
hold any such effort in abhorrence. A Scandi- 
navian, a German, or an Irishman who has really 
become an American has the right to stand on 
exactly the same footing as any native-bom citi- 
zen in the land, and is just as much entitled to the 
friendship and support, social and political, of his 
neighbors. Among the men with whom I have 
been thrown in close personal contact socially, and 
who have been among my staunchest friends and 
allies politically, are not a few Americans who hap- 
pen to have been bom on the other side of the 
water, — in Germany, Ireland, Scandinavia; and 
there could be no better men in the ranks of our 
native -bom citizens. 

In closing, I cannot better express the ideal atti- 
tude that should be taken by our fellow-citizens of 



36 American Ideals 

foreign birth than by quoting the words of a rep- 
resentative American, born in Germany, the Hon- 
orable Richard Guenther of Wisconsin. In a 
speech, spoken at the time of the Samoan trouble, 
he said : 

"We know as well as any other class of Ameri- 
can citizens where our duties belong. We will 
work for our country in time of peace and fight 
for it in time of war, if a time of war should ever 
come. When I say our country, I mean, of course, 
our adopted country. I mean the United States 
of America. After passing through the crucible of 
naturalization, we are no longer Germans ; we are 
Americans. Our attachment to America cannot 
be measured by the length of our residence here. 
We are Americans from the moment we touch the 
American shore until we are laid in American 
graves. We will fight for America whenever 
necessary. America, first, last, and all the time. 
America against Germany, America against the 
world; America, right or wrong; always America. 
We are Americans." 

All honor to the man who spoke such words as 
those; and I believe they express the feelings of 
the great majority of those among our fellow- 
American citizens who were bom abroad. We 
Americans can only do our allotted task well if we 
face it steadily and bravely, seeing but not fearing 
the dangers. Above all, we must stand shoulder 



True Americanism Z7 

to shoulder, not asking as to the ancestry or creed 
of our comrades, but only demanding that they be 
in very truth Americans, and that we all work 
together — heart, hand, and head — for the honor 
and the greatness of our common country. 



CHAPTER III 

THE MANLY VIRTUES AND PRACTICAL POLITICS » 

SOMETIMES, in addressing men who sincerely 
desire the betterment of our public affairs, 
but who have not taken active part in di- 
recting them, I feel tempted to tell them that 
there are two gospels which should be preached to 
every reformer. The first is the gospel of mor- 
ality ; the second is the gospel of efficiency. 

To decent, upright citizens it is hardly necessary 
to preach the doctrine of morality as applied to 
the affairs of pubHc life. It is an even graver 
offence to sin against the commonwealth than to 
sin against an individual. The man who debauches 
our public life, whether by malversation of funds 
in office, by the actual bribery of voters or of 
legislators, or by the corrupt use of the offices as 
spoils wherewith to reward the imworthy and the 
vicious for their noxious and interested activity in 
the baser walks of political life, — this man is a 
greater foe to our well-being as a nation than is 
even the defaulting cashier of a bank, or the be- 
trayer of a private trust. No amoimt of intelli- 
gence and no amount of energy will save a nation 

I The Forum, July, 1894. 
38 V 



The Manly Virtues 39 

which is not honest, and no government can ever 
be a permanent success if administered in accord- 
ance with base ideals. The first requisite in the 
citizen who wishes to share the work of our public 
life, whether he wishes himself to hold office or 
merely to do his plain duty as an American by 
taking part in the management of our political 
machinery, is that he shall act disinterestedly and 
with a sincere purpose to serve the whole common- 
wealth. 

But disinterestedness and honesty and unselfish 
desire to do what is right are not enough in them- 
selves. A man must not only be disinterested, but 
he must be efficient. If he goes into politics he 
must go into practical politics, in order to make 
his influence felt. Practical politics must not be 
construed to mean dirty politics. On the con- 
trary, in the long run the politics of fraud and 
treachery and foulness are unpractical politics, and 
the most practical of all politicians is the politician 
who is clean and decent and upright. But a man 
who goes into the actual battles of the political 
world must prepare himself much as he would for 
the struggle in any other branch of our life. He 
must be prepared to meet men of far lower ideals 
than his own, and to face things, not as he would 
wish them, but as they are. He must not lose 
his own high ideal, and yet he must face the fact 
that the majority of the men with whom he must 



; 



40 American Ideals 

work have lower ideals. He must stand firmly 
for what he believes, and yet he must realize that 
political action, to be effective, must be the joint 
action of many men, and that he must sacrifice 
somewhat of his own opinions to those of his asso- 
ciates if he ever hopes to see his desires take prac- 
tical shape. 

The prime thing that every man who takes an 
interest in politics should remember is that he 
must act, and not merely criticise the actions of 
others. It is not the man who sits by his fireside 
reading his evening paper, and saying how bad 
our politics and politicians are, who will ever do 
anything to save us; it is the man who goes out 
into the rough hurly-burly of the caucus, the 
primary, and the political meeting, and there faces 
his fellows on equal terms. The real service is 
rendered, not by the critic who stands aloof from 
the contest, but by the man who enters into it and 
bears his part as a man should, undeterred by the 
blood and the sweat. It is a pleasant but a dan- 
gerous thing to associate merely with cultivated, 
refined men of high ideals and sincere purpose to 
do right, and to think that one has done all one's 
duty by discussing politics with such associates. 
It is a good thing to meet men of this stamp ; in- 
deed it is a necessary thing, for we thereby brighten 
our ideals and keep in touch with the people who 
are unselfish in their purposes ; but if we associate 



The Manly Virtues 4^ 

with such men exclusively we can accomplish 
nothing. The actual battle must be fought out 
on other and less pleasant fields. The actual ad- 
vance must be made in the field of practical poli- 
tics among the men who represent or guide or 
control the mass of the voters, the men who are 
sometimes rough and coarse, who sometimes have 
lower ideals than they should, but who are ca- 
pable, masterful, and efficient. It is only by 
mingling on equal terms with such men, by show- 
ing them that one is able to give and to receive 
heavy punishment without flinching, and that one 
can master the details of political management as 
well as they can, that it is possible for a man to 
establish a standing that will be useful to him in 
fighting for a great reform. Every man who 
wishes well to his country is in honor bound to 
take an active part in political life. If he does his 
duty and takes that active part he will be sure 
occasionally to commit mistakes and to be guilty 
of shortcomings. For these mistakes and short- 
comings he will receive the unmeasured denuncia- 
tion of the critics who commit neither, because 
they never do anything but criticise . Nevertheless 
he will have the satisfaction of knowing that the 
salvation of the country ultimately lies, not in the 
hands of his critics, but in the hands of those who, 
however imperfectly, actually do the work of the 
nation. I would not for one moment be under- 



42 American Ideals 

stood as objecting to criticism or failing to appre- 
ciate its importance. We need fearless criticism of 
our public men and public parties ; we need unspar- 
ing condemnation of all persons and all principles 
that coimt for evil in our public life: but it be- 
hooves every man to remember that the work of 
the critic, important though it is, is of altogether 
secondary importance, and that, in the end, pro- 
gress is accomplished by the man who does the 
things, and not by the man who talks about how 
they ought or ought not to be done. 

Therefore the man who wishes to do good in his 
community must go into active political life. If 
he is a Republican, let him join his local Repub- 
lican association; if a Democrat, the Democratic 
association ; if an Independent, then let him put 
himself in touch with those who think as he does. 
In any event, let him make himself an active force 
and make his influence felt. Whether he works 
within or without party lines he can surely find 
plenty of men who are desirous of good govern- 
ment, and who, if they act together, become at 
once a power on the side of righteousness. Of 
course, in a government like ours, a man can ac- 
complish anything only by acting in combination 
with others, and equally, of course, a number of 
people can act together only by each sacrificing 
certain of his beliefs or prejudices. That man is 
indeed unfortunate who cannot in any given dis- 



The Manly Virtues 43 

trict find some people with whom he can con- 
scientiously act. He may find that he can do best 
by acting within a party organization ; he may find 
that he can do best by acting, at least for cer- 
tain purposes, or at certain times, outside of party 
organizations, in an independent body of some 
kind ; but with some association he must act if he 
wishes to exert any real influence. 

One thing to be always remembered is that 
neither independence on the one hand nor party 
fealty on the other can ever be accepted as an 
excuse for failure to do active work in politics. 
The party man who offers his allegiance to party 
as an excuse for blindly following his party, right 
or wrong, and who fails to try to make that party 
in any way better, commits a crime against the 
coimtry; and a crime quite as serious is com- 
mitted by the independent who makes his inde- 
pendence an excuse for easy self-indulgence, and 
who thinks that when he says he belongs to 
neither party he is excused from the duty of tak- 
ing part in the practical work of party organiza- 
tions. The party man is boimd to do his full 
share in party management. He is bound to 
attend the caucuses and the primaries, to see that 
only good men are put up, and to exert his influ- 
ence as strenuously against the foes of good gov- 
ernment within his party, as, through his party 
machinery, he does against those who are without 



44 American Ideals 

the party. In the same way the Independent, if 
he cannot take part in the regular organizations, 
is bound to do just as much active constructive 
work (not merely the work of criticism) outside; 
he is bound to try to get up an organization of his 
own and to try to make that organization felt in 
some effective manner. Whatever course the man 
who wishes to do his duty by his country takes in 
reference to parties or to independence of parties, 
he is bound to try to put himself in touch with men 
who think as he does, and to help make their joint 
influence felt in behalf of the powers that go for 
decency and good government. He must try to 
accomplish things; he must not vote in the air 
unless it is really necessary. Occasionally a man 
must cast a "conscience vote," when there is no 
possibility of carrying to victory his principles or 
his nominees; at times, indeed, this may be his 
highest duty; but ordinarily this is not the case. 
As a general rule a man ought to work and vote 
for something which there is at least a fair chance 
of putting into effect. 

Yet another thing to be remembered by the man 
who wishes to make his influence felt for good in 
our politics is that he must act purely as an Ameri- 
can. If he is not deeply imbued with the Ameri- 
can spirit he cannot succeed. Any organization 
which tries to work along the line of caste or creed, 
which fails to treat all American citizens on their 



The Maniy Virtues 45 

merits as men, will fail, and will deserve to fail. 
Where our political life is healthy, there is and 
can be no room for any movement organized to 
help or to antagonize men because they do or do 
not profess a certain religion, or because they were 
or were not bom here or abroad. We have a 
right to ask that those with whom we associate, 
and those for whom we vote, shall be themselves 
good Americans in heart and spirit, unhampered 
by adherence to foreign ideals, and acting without 
regard to the national and religious prejudices of 
European countries; but if they are really good 
Americans in spirit and thought and purpose, that 
is all that we have any right to consider in regard 
to them. In the same way there must be no dis- 
crimination for or against any man because of his 
social standing. On the one side, there is nothing 
to be made out of a political organization which 
draws an exclusive social line, and on the other 
it must be remembered that it is just as un- 
American to vote against a man because he is rich 
as to vote against him because he is poor. The 
one man has just as much right as the other to 
claim to be treated purely on his merits as a man. 
In short, to do good work in politics, the men 
who organize must organize wholly without regard 
to whether their associates v/ere bom here or 
abroad, whether they are Protestants or Catholics, 
Jews or Gentiles, whether they are bankers or 



4^ American Ideals 

butchers, professors or day-laborers. All that 
can rightly be asked of one's political associates 
is that they shall be honest men, good Americans, 
and substantially in accord as regards their politi- 
cal ideas. 

Another thing that must not be forgotten by 
the man desirous of doing good political work is 
the need of the rougher, manlier virtues, and 
above all the virtue of personal courage — physical 
as well as moral. If we wish to do good work for 
our country, we must be unselfish, disinterested, 
sincerely desirous of the well-being of the common- 
wealth, and capable of devoted adherence to a 
lofty ideal; but in addition we must be vigorous 
in mind and body, able to hold our own in rough 
conflict with our fellows, able to suffer punishment 
without flinching, and, at need, to repay it in kind 
with full interest. A peaceful and commercial 
civilization is always in danger of suffering the 
loss of the virile fighting qualities without which 
no nation, however cultured, however refined, 
however thrifty and prosperous, can ever amount 
to anything. Every citizen should be taught, 
both in public and in private life, that while he 
must avoid brawling and quarrelling, it is his duty 
to stand up for his rights. He must realize that 
the only man who is more contemptible than the 
blusterer and bully is the coward. No man is 
worth much to the commonwealth if he is not 



The Manly Virtues 47 

capable of feeling righteous wrath and just indig- 
nation, if he is not stirred to hot anger by mis- 
doing, and is not impelled to see justice meted 
out to the wrong-doers. No man is worth much 
anywhere if he does not possess both moral and 
physical courage. A politician who really serves 
his country well and deserves his coimtry's grati- 
tude, must usually possess some of the hardy 
virtues which we admire in the soldier who serves 
his country well in the field. 

An ardent young reformer is very apt to try 
to begin by reforming too much. He needs al- 
ways to keep in mind that he has got to serve as 
a sergeant before he assumes the duties of com- 
mander-in-chief. It is right for him from the 
beginning to take a great interest in national, 
State, and municipal affairs, and to try to make 
himself felt in them if the occasion arises ; but the 
best work must be done by the citizen working in 
his own ward or district. Let him associate him- 
self with the men who think as he does, and who, 
like him, are sincerely devoted to the public good. 
Then let them try to make themselves felt in the 
choice of alderman, of councilman, of assembly- 
man. The politicians will be prompt to recognize 
their power, and the people will recognize it, too, 
after a while. Let them organize and work, un- 
daunted by any temporary defeat. If they fail 
at first, and if they fail again, let them merely 



48 American Ideals 

make up their minds to redouble their efforts and 
perhaps alter their methods; but let them keep 
on working. 

It is sheer unmanliness and cowardice to shrink 
from the contest because at first there is failure, 
or because the work is difficult or repulsive. No 
man who is worth his salt has any right to aban- 
don the effort to better our politics merely because 
he does not find it pleasant, merely because it 
entails associations which to him happen to be 
disagreeable. Let him keep right on, taking the 
buffets he gets good-humoredly, and repaying 
them with heartiness when the chance arises. Let 
him make up his mind that he will have to face 
the violent opposition of the spoils politician, and 
also, too often, the unfair and ungenerous criti- 
cism of those who ought to know better. Let him 
be careful not to show himself so thin-skinned as 
to mind either; let him fight his way forward, 
paying only so much regard to both as is necessary 
to enable him to win in spite of them. He may 
not, and indeed probably will not, accomplish 
nearly as much as he would like to, or as he thinks 
he ought to: but he will certainly accomplish 
something; and if he can feel that he has helped 
to elevate the type of representative sent to the 
municipal, the State, or the national legislature 
from his district, or to elevate the standard of duty 
among the public officials in his own ward, he has 



The Manly Virtues 49 

a right to be profoundly satisfied with what he 
has accomplished. 

Finally, there is one other matter which the man 
who tries to wake his fellows to higher political 
action would do well to ponder. It is a good 
thing to appeal to citizens to work for good gov- 
ernment because it will better their estate materi- 
ally, but it is a far better thing to appeal to them 
to work for good government because it is right 
in itself to do so. Doubtless, if we can have clean 
honest politics, we shall be better off in material 
matters. A thoroughly pure, upright, and ca- 
pable administration of the affairs of New York 
city results in a very appreciable increase of com- 
fort to each citizen. We should have better 
systems of transportation ; we should have cleaner 
streets, better sewers, and the like. But it is 
sometimes difficult to show the individual citizen 
that he will be individually better off in his busi- 
ness and in his home affairs for taking part in 
politics. I do not think it is always worth while 
to show that this will always be the case. The 
citizen should be appealed to primarily on the 
ground that it is his plain duty, if he wishes to 
deserve the name of freeman, to do his full share 
in the hard and difficult work of self-government. 
He must do his share unless he is willing to prove 
himself unfit for free institutions, fit only to live 
under a government where he will be plundered 

VOL. I. — 4. 



50 American Ideals 

and bullied because he deserves to be plundered 
and bullied on account of his selfish timidity and 
short-sightedness. A clean and decent govern- 
ment is sure in the end to benefit our citizens in 
the material circumstances of their lives ; but each 
citizen should be appealed to, to take part in bet- 
tering our politics, not for the sake of any possible 
improvement it may bring to his affairs, but on the 
ground that it is his plain duty to do so, and that 
this is a duty which it is cowardly and dishonor- 
able in him to shirk. 

To sum up, then, the men who wish to work for 
decent poHtics must work practically, and yet 
must not swerve from their devotion to a high 
ideal. They must actually do things, and not 
merely confine themselves to criticising those who 
do them. They must work disinterestedly, and 
appeal to the disinterested element in others, al- 
though they must also do work which will result 
in the material betterment of the community. 
They must act as Americans through and through, 
in spirit and hope and purpose, and, while being 
disinterested, unselfish, and generous in their deal- 
ings with others, they must also show that they 
possess the essential manly virtues of energy, of 
resolution, and of indomitable personal courage. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE COLLEGE GRADUATE AND PUBLIC LIFE ^ 

THERE are always, in our national life, cer- 
tain tendencies that give us ground for 
alarm, and certain others that give us 
ground for hope. Among the latter we must put 
the fact that there has undoubtedly been a grow- 
ing feeling among educated men that they are in 
honor bound to do their full share of the work of 
American public life. 

We have in this coimtry an equality of rights. 
It is the plain duty of every man to see that 
his rights are respected. That weak good-nature 
which acquiesces in wrong-doing, whether from 
laziness, timidity, or indifference, is a very un- 
wholesome quality. It should be second nature 
with every man to insist that he be given full jus- 
tice. But if there is an equality of rights, there 
is an equality of duties. It is proper to demand 
more from the man with exceptional advantages 
than from the man without them. A heavy moral 
obligation rests upon the man of means and upon 
the man of education to do their full duty by their 
country. On no class does this obligation rest 
I Atlantic Monthly, August, 1894. 
51 



52 American Ideals 

more heavily than upon the men with a collegiate 
education, the men who are graduates of our uni- 
versities. Their education gives them no right to 
feel the least superiority over any of their fellow- 
citizens ; but it certainly ought to make them feel 
that they should stand foremost in the honorable 
effort to serve the whole public by doing their 
duty as Americans in the body politic. This obli- 
gation very possibly rests even more heavily upon 
the men of means ; but of this it is not necessary 
now to speak. The men of mere wealth never can 
have and never should have the capacity for doing 
good work that is possessed by the men of excep- 
tional mental training ; but that they may become 
both a laughing-stock and a menace to the com- 
munity is made unpleasantly apparent by that 
portion of the New York business and social world 
which is most in evidence in the newspapers. 

To the great body of men who have had ex- 
ceptional advantages in the way of educational 
facilities, we have a right, then, to look for good 
service to the State. The service may be ren- 
dered in many different ways. In a reasonable 
number of cases, the man may himself rise to high 
political position. That men do actually so rise is 
shown by the number of graduates of Harvard, 
Yale, and our other universities who are now tak- 
ing a prominent part in public life. These cases 
must necessarily, however, form but a small part 



College Graduate and Public Life 53 

of the whole. The enormous majority of our edu- 
cated men have to make their own living, and are 
obliged to take up careers in which they must work 
heart and soul to succeed. Nevertheless, the man 
of business and the man of science, the doctor of 
divinity and the doctor of law, the architect, the 
engineer, and the writer, all alike owe a positive 
duty to the community, the neglect of which they 
cannot excuse on any plea of their private affairs. 
They are bound to follow understandingly the 
course of public events ; they are bound to try to 
estimate and form judgment upon public men; 
and they are bound to act intelligently and eft'ec- 
tively in support of the principles which they 
deem to be right and for the best interests of the 
country. 

The most important thing for this class of edu- 
cated men to realize is that they do not really 
form a class at all. I have used the word in de- 
fault of another, but I have merely used it roughly 
to group together people who have had unusual 
opportunities of a certain kind. A large number 
of the people to whom these opportunities are 
offered fail to take advantage of them, and a very 
much larger number of those to whom they have 
not been offered succeed none the less in making 
them for themselves. An educated man must not 
go into politics as such; he must go in simply as 
an American; and when he is once in, he will 



54 American Ideals 

speedily realize that he must work very hard in- 
deed, or he will be upset by some other Ameri- 
can, with no education at all, but with much 
natural capacity. His education ought to make 
him feel particularly ashamed of himself if he acts 
meanly or dishonestly, or in any way falls short 
of the ideal of good citizenship, and it ought to 
make him feel that he must show that he has 
profited by it ; but it should certainly give him no 
feeling of superiority until by actual work he has 
shown that superiority. In other words, the edu- 
cated man must realize that he is living in a de- 
mocracy and under democratic conditions, and 
that he is entitled to no more respect and consid- 
eration than he can win by actual performance. 

This must be steadily kept in mind not only by 
educated men themselves, but particularly by the 
men who give the tone to our great educational 
institutions. These educational institutions, if 
they are to do their best work, must strain every 
effort to keep their life in touch with the life of the 
nation at the present day. This is necessary for 
tJie country, but it is very much more necessary 
for the educated men themselves. It is a misfor- 
tune for any land if its people of cultivation take 
little part in shaping its destiny; but the misfor- 
tune is far greater for the people of cultivation. 
The country has a right to demand the honest and 
efficient service of every man in it, but especially 



College Graduate and Public Life 55 

of every man who has had the advantage of rigid 
mental and moral training ; the country is so much 
the poorer when any class of honest men fail to 
do their duty by it ; but the loss to the class itself 
is immeasurable. If our educated men as a whole 
become incapable of playing their full part in our 
life, if they cease doing their share of the rough, 
hard work which must be done, and grow to take 
a position of mere dilettanteism in our public 
affairs, they will speedily sink in relation to their 
fellows who really do the work of governing, until 
they stand toward them as a cultivated, ineffec- 
tive man with a taste for bric-k-brac stands toward 
a great artist. When once a body of citizens be- 
comes thoroughly out of touch and out of temper 
with the national life, its usefulness is gone, and 
its power of leaving its mark on the times is gone 
also. 

The first great lesson which the college graduate 
should learn is the lesson of work rather than of 
criticism. Criticism is necessary and useful; it 
is often indispensable; but it can never take the 
place of action or be even a poor substitute for it. 
The function of the mere critic is of very subor- 
dinate usefulness. It is the doer of deeds who 
actually counts in the battle for life, and not the 
man who looks on and says how the fight ought to 
be fought, without himself sharing the stress and 
the danger. 



56 American Ideals 

There is, however, a need for proper critical 
work. Wrongs should be strenuously and fear- 
lessly denounced; evil principles and evil men 
should be condemned. The politician who cheats 
or swindles, or the newspaper man who lies in any 
form, should be made to feel that he is an object 
of scorn for all honest men. We need fearless 
criticism; but we need that it should also be in- 
telligent. At present the man who is most apt 
to regard himself as an intelligent critic of our 
political affairs is often the man who knows noth- 
ing whatever about them. Criticism which is 
ignorant or prejudiced is a source of great harm 
to the nation; and where ignorant or prejudiced 
critics are themselves educated men, their atti- 
tude does real harm also to the class to which they 
belong. 

The tone of a portion of the press of the country 
toward public men, and especially toward political 
opponents, is degrading, all fomis of coarse and 
noisy slander being apparently considered legiti- 
mate weapons to employ against men of the 
opposite party or faction. Unfortunately, not a 
few of the journals that pride themselves upon 
being independent in politics, and the organs of 
cultivated men, betray the same characteristics 
in a less coarse but quite as noxious form. All 
these journals do great harm by accustoming good 
citizens to see their public men, good and bad. 



College Graduate and Public Life 57 

assailed indiscriminately as scoundrels. The effect 
is twofold : the citizen learning, on the one hand, 
to disbelieve any statement he sees in any news- 
paper, so that the attacks on evil lose their edge ; 
and, on the other, gradually acquiring a deep- 
rooted belief that all public men are more or less 
bad. In consequence, his political instinct be- 
comes hopelessly blurred, and he grows unable to 
tell the good representative from the bad. The 
worst offence that can be committed against the 
Republic is the offence of the public man who 
betrays his trust ; but second only to it comes the 
offence of the man who tries to persuade others 
that an honest and efficient public man is dishon- 
est or unworthy. This is a wrong that can be 
committed in a great many different ways. Down- 
right foul abuse may be, after all, less dangerous 
than incessant misstatements, sneers, and those 
half-truths that are the meanest lies. 

For educated men of weak fibre, there lies a 
real danger in that species of literary work which 
appeals to their cultivated senses because of its 
scholarly and pleasant tone, but which enjoins as 
the proper attitude to assume in public life one of 
mere criticism and negation; which teaches the 
adoption toward public men and public affairs of 
that sneering tone which so surely denotes a mean 
and small mind. If a man does not have belief 
and enthusiasm, the chances are small indeed that 



58 American Ideals 

he will ever do a man's work in the world ; and the 
paper or the college which, by its general course, 
tends to eradicate this power of belief and enthu- 
siasm, this desire for work, has rendered to the 
young men under its influence the worst service 
it could possibly render. Good can often be done 
by criticising sharply and severely the wrong ; but 
excessive indulgence in criticism is never anything 
but bad, and no amount of criticism can in any 
way take the place of active and zealous warfare 
for the right. 

Again, there is a certain tendency in college life, 
— a tendency encouraged by some of the very papers 
referred to, — to make educated men shrink from 
contact with the rough people who do the world's 
work, and associate only with one another and 
with those who think as they do. This is a most 
dangerous tendency. It is very agreeable to de- 
ceive one's self into the belief that one is perform- 
ing the whole duty of man by sitting at home in 
ease, doing nothing wrong, and confining one's 
participation in politics to conversations and meet- 
ings with men who have had the same training and 
look at things in the same way. It is always a 
temptation to do this, because those who do 
nothing else often speak as if in some way they 
deserved credit for their attitude, and as if they 
stood above their brethren who plough the rough 
fields. Moreover, many people whose political 



College Graduate and Public Life 59 

work is done more or less after this fashion are 
very noble and very sincere in their aims and 
aspirations, and are striving for what is best and 
most decent in public life. 

Nevertheless, this is a snare round which it 
behooves every young man to walk carefully. Let 
him beware of associating only with the people of 
his own caste and of his own little ways of politi- 
cal thought. Let him learn that he must deal 
with the mass of men; that he must go out and 
stand shoulder to shoulder with his friends of 
every rank, and face to face with his foes of every 
rank, and must bear himself well in the hurly- 
burly. He must not be frightened by the many 
unpleasant features of the contest, and he must 
not expect to have it all his own way or to accom- 
plish too much. He will meet with checks and 
will make many mistakes ; but if he perseveres, he 
will achieve a measure of success and will do a 
measure of good such as is never possible to the 
refined, cultivated, intellectual men who shrink 
aside from the actual fray. 

Yet again, college men must learn to be as prac- 
tical in politics as they would be in business or in 
law. It is surely unnecessary to say that by 
"practical" I do not mean anything that savors 
in the least of dishonesty. On the contrary, a 
college man is peculiarly boimd to keep a high 
ideal and be true to it; but he must work in 



6o American Ideals 

practical ways to try to realize this ideal, and must 
not refuse to do anything because he cannot get 
ever3^hing. One especially necessary thing is to 
know the facts by actual experience, and not to 
take refuge in mere theorizing. There are always 
a number of excellent and well-meaning men whom 
we grow to regard with amused impatience be- 
cause they waste all their energies on some vision- 
ary scheme which, even if it were not visionary, 
would be useless. When they come to deal with 
political questions, these men are apt to err from 
sheer lack of familiarity with the workings of our 
government. No man ever really learned from 
books how to manage a governmental system. 
Books are admirable adjuncts, and the statesman 
w^ho has carefully studied them is far more apt to 
do good work than if he had not; but if he has 
never done an\^hing but study books he will not 
be a statesman at all. Thus, every young poli- 
tician should of course read the Federalist. It is 
the greatest book of the kind that has ever been 
written. Hamilton, Madison, and Jay would have 
been poorly equipped for writing it if they had not 
possessed an extensive acquaintance with litera- 
ture, and in particular if they had not been care- 
ful students of political literature; but the great 
cause of the value of their wTitings lay in the fact 
that they knew by actual work and association 
what practical politics meant. They had helped 



College Graduate and Public Life 6i 

to shape the poHtical thought of the country, and 
to do its legislative and executive work, and so 
they were in a condition to speak understandingly 
about it. For similar reasons, Mr. Bryce's Ameri- 
can Commonwealth has a value possessed by no 
other book of the kind, largely because Mr. Bryce 
is himself an active member of Parliament, a man 
of good standing and some leadership in his own 
party, and a practical politician. In the same 
way a life of Washington by Cabot Lodge, a sketch 
of Lincoln by Carl Schurz, a biography of Pitt by 
Lord Rosebery, have an added value because of 
the writers' own work in politics. 

It is always a pity to see men fritter away their 
energies on any pointless scheme; and, unfortu- 
nately, a good many of our educated people, when 
they come to deal with politics, do just such frit- 
tering. Take, for instance, the queer freak of 
arguing in favor of establishing what its advocates 
are pleased to call "responsible government" in 
our institutions, or in other words of grafting cer- 
tain features of the English parliamentary system 
upon our own Presidential and Congressional sys- 
tem. This agitation was too largely deficient in 
body to enable it to last, and it has now, I think, 
died away; but at one time quite a number of 
our men who spoke of themselves as students of 
political history were engaged in treating this 
scheme as something serious. Few men who had 



62 American Ideals 

ever taken an active part in politics, or who had 
studied poHtics in the way that a doctor is ex- 
pected to study surgery and medicine, so much as 
gave it a thought; but very intelHgent men did, 
just because they were misdirecting their energies 
and were wholly ignorant that they ought to know 
practically about a problem before they attempted 
its solution. The English, or so-called "respon- 
sible," theory of parliamentary government is one 
entirely incompatible with our own governmental 
institutions. It could not be put into operation 
here save by absolutely sweeping away the United 
States Constitution. Incidentally, I may say it 
would be to the last degree undesirable, if it were 
practicable. But this is not the point upon which 
I wish to dwell; the point is that it was wholly 
impracticable to put it into operation, and that 
an agitation favoring this kind of government was, 
from its nature, unintelligent. The people who 
wrote about it wasted their time, whereas they 
could have spent it to great advantage had they 
seriously studied our institutions and sought to 
devise practicable and desirable methods of in- 
creasing and centring genuine responsibility — for 
all thinking men agree that there is an undoubted 
need for a change in this direction. 

But, of course, much of the best work that has 
been done in the field of political study has been 
done by men who were not active politicians, 



College Graduate and Public Life 63 

though they were careful and painstaking students 
of the phenomena of pohtics. The back numbers 
of our leading magazines afford proof of this. Cer- 
tain of the governmental essays by such writers as 
Mr, Lawrence Lowell and Professor A. B. Hart, 
and especially such books as that on the Speakers' 
Powers and Duties, by Miss Follet, have been gen- 
uine and valuable contributions to our political 
thought. These essays have been studied care- 
fully not only by scholars, but by men engaged in 
practical politics, because they were written with 
good judgment and keen insight after careful in- 
vestigation of the facts, and so deserved respectful 
attention. 

It is a misfortime for any people when the paths 
of the practical and the theoretical politicians 
diverge so widely that they have no common 
standing-groimd . When the Greek thinkers began 
to devote their attention to purely visionary poli- 
tics of the kind found in Plato's Republic, while 
the Greek practical politicians simply exploited 
the quarrelsome little commonwealths in their own 
interests, then the end of Greek liberty was at 
hand. No government that cannot command the 
respectful support of the best thinkers is in an 
entirely sound condition ; but it is well to keep in 
mind the remark of Frederick the Great, that if 
he wished to punish a province he would allow it 
to be governed by the philosophers. It is a great 



64 American Ideals 

misfortune for the country when the practical 
politician and the doctrinaire have no point in 
common, but the misfortune is, if anything, great- 
est for the doctrinaire. The ideal to be set before 
the student of politics and the practical politician 
alike is the ideal of the Federalist. Each man 
should realize that he cannot do his best, either in 
the study of politics or in applied politics unless he 
has a working knowledge of both branches. A 
limited number of people can do good work by the 
careful study of governmental institutions, but 
they can do it only if they have themselves a prac- 
tical Imowledge of the workings of these institu- 
tions. A very large number of people, on the 
other hand, may do excellent work in politics 
without much theoretic knowledge of the subject ; 
but without this knowledge they cannot rise to the 
highest rank, while in any rank their capacity to 
do good work will be immensely increased if they 
have such knowledge. 

There are certain other qualities about which it 
is hardly necessary to speak. If an educated man 
is not heartily American in instinct and feeling 
and taste and sympathy, he will amount to noth- 
ing in our public life. Patriotism, love of country, 
and pride in the flag which symbolizes country 
may be feelings which the race will at some 
period outgrow, but at present they are very 
real and strong, and the man who lacks them 



College Graduate and Public Life 65 

is a useless creature, a mere incumbrance to the 
land. 

A man of sound political instincts can no more 
subscribe to the doctrine of absolute independence 
of party on the one hand than to that of unques- 
tioning party allegiance on the other. No man 
can accomplish much unless he works in an or- 
ganization with others, and this organization, no 
matter how temporary, is a party for the time 
being. But that man is a dangerous citizen who 
so ifiT mistakes means for ends as to become ser- 
vile in his devotion to his party and afraid to leave 
it when the party goes wrong. To deify either 
independence or party allegiance merely as such 
is a little absurd. It depends entirely upon the 
motive, the purpose, the result. For the last two 
years the Senator who, beyond all his colleagues 
in the United States Senate, has shown himself 
independent of party ties is the very man to whom 
the leading champions of independence in poli- 
tics most strenuously object. The truth is, sim- 
ply, that there are times when it may be the duty 
of a man to break with his party, and there are 
other times when it may be his duty to stand by 
his party, even though, on some points, he thinks 
that party wrong; he must be prepared to leave 
it when necessary and he must not sacrifice his 
influence by leaving it unless it is necessary. If 
we had no party allegiance our politics would 

VOL. I. — 5. 



66 American Ideals 

become mere windy anarchy, and, under present 
conditions, our government could hardly continue 
at all. If we had no independence, we should 
always be running the risk of the most degraded 
kind of despotism, — the despotism of the party 
boss and the party machine. 

It is just the same way about compromises. 
Occasionally one hears some well-meaning person 
say of another, apparently in praise, that he is 
"never willing to compromise." It is a mere 
truism to say that, in politics, there has to be one 
continual compromise. Of course, now and then 
questions arise upon which a compromise is in- 
admissible. There could be no compromise with 
secession, and there was none. There should be no 
avoidable compromise about any great moral ques- 
tion. But only a very few great reforms or great 
measures of any kind can be carried through with- 
out concession. No student of American history 
needs to be reminded that the Constitution itself 
is a bimdle of compromises, and was adopted only 
because of this fact, and that the same thing is 
true of the Emancipation Proclamation. 

In conclusion, then, the man with a university 
education is in honor bound to take an active part 
in our political life, and to do his full duty as a 
citizen by helping his fellow-citizens to the extent 
of his power in the exercise of the rights of self- 
government. He is bound to rank action far 



College Graduate and Public Life 67 

above criticism, and to understand that the man 
deserving of credit is the man who actually does 
the things, even though imperfectly, and not the 
man who confines himself to talking about how 
they ought to be done. He is bound to have a 
high ideal and to strive to realize it, and yet he 
must make up his mind that he will never be able 
to get the highest good, and that he must devote 
himself with all his energy to getting the best that 
he can. Finally, his work must be disinterested 
and honest, and it must be given without regard 
to his own success or failure, and without regard 
to the effect it has upon his own fortunes; and 
while he must show the virtues of uprightness and 
tolerance and gentleness, he must also show the 
sterner virtues of courage, resolution, and hardi- 
hood, and the desire to war with merciless effec- 
tiveness against the existence of wrong. 



CHAPTER V 

PHASES OF STATE LEGISLATION ^ 

The Albany Legislature 

FEW persons realize the magnitude of the in- 
terests affected by State legislation in New 
York. It is no mere figure of speech to 
call New York the Empire State; and many of 
the laws most directly and immediately affecting 
the interests of its citizens are passed at Albany, 
and not at Washington. In fact, there is at Al- 
bany a little home -rule parliament which presides 
over the destinies of a commonwealth more popu- 
lous than any one of two thirds of the kingdoms of 
Europe, and one which, in point of wealth, ma- 
terial prosperity, variety of interests, extent of 
territory, and capacity for expansion, can fairly be 
said to rank next to the powers of the first class. 
This little parHament, composed of one hundred 
and twenty-eight members in the Assembly and 
thirty-two in the Senate, is, in the fullest sense of 
the term, a representative body; there is hardly 
one of the many and widely diversified interests 
of the State that has not a mouthpiece at Albany, 

I The Century, January, 1885. 
68 



Phases of State Legislation 69 

and hardly a single class of its citizens — not even 
excepting, I regret to say, the criminal class — 
which lacks its representative among the legislators. 
In the three Legislatures of which I have been 
a member, I have sat with bankers and bricklay- 
ers, with merchants and mechanics, with lawyers, 
farmers, day-laborers, saloon-keepers, clergymen, 
and prize-fighters. Among my colleagues there 
were many very good men ; there was a still more 
numerous class of men who were neither very good 
nor very bad, but went one way or the other, ac- 
cording to the strength of the various conflicting 
influences acting around, behind, and upon them ; 
and, finally, there were many very bad men. 
Still, the New York Legislature, taken as a whole, 
is by no means as bad a body as we would be led 
to believe if our judgment was based purely on 
what we read in the great metropolitan papers; 
for the custom of the latter is to portray things 
as either very much better or very much worse 
than they are. Where a number of men, many of 
them poor, some of them unscrupulous, and others 
elected by constituents too ignorant to hold them 
to a proper accountability for their actions, are 
put into a position of great temporary power, 
where they are called to take action upon ques- 
tions affecting the welfare of large corporations 
and wealthy private individuals, the chances for 
corruption are always great; and that there is 



70 American Ideals 

much viciousness and political dishonesty, much 
moral cowardice, and a good deal of actual bribe- 
taking in Albany, no one who has had any prac- 
tical experience of legislation can doubt; but, at 
the same time, I think that the good members 
generally outnumber the bad, and that there is 
not often doubt as to the result when a naked 
question of right or wrong can be placed clearly 
and in its true light before the Legislature. The 
trouble is that on many questions the Legislature 
never does have the right and wrong clearly shown 
it. Either some bold, clever parliamentary tac- 
tician snaps the measure through before the mem- 
bers are aware of its nature, or else the obnoxiotis 
features are so combined with good ones as to pro- 
cure the support of a certain proportion of that 
large class of men whose intentions are excellent, 
but whose intellects are foggy. Or else the neces- 
sary party organization, which we call the "ma- 
chine," uses its great power for some definite evil 
aim. 

The Character of the Representatives 

The representatives from different sections of 
the State differ widely in character. Those from 
the country districts are generally very good men. 
They are usually well-to-do farmers, small lawyers, 
or prosperous store -keepers, and are shrewd, quiet, 
and honest. They often are narrow-minded and 



Phases of State Legislation 71 

slow to receive an idea; but, on the other hand, 
when they get a good one they cHng to it with the 
utmost tenacity. They form very much the most 
valuable class of legislators. For the most part they 
are native Americans, and those who are not are 
men who have become completely Americanized 
in all their ways and habits of thought. One of 
the most useful members of the last Legislature 
was a German from a western county, and the 
extent of his Americanization can be judged from 
the fact that he was actually an ardent prohibi- 
tionist: certainly no one who knows Teutonic 
human nature will require further proof. Again, 
I sat for an entire session beside a very intelligent 
member from northern New York before I discov- 
ered that he was an Irishman: all his views of 
legislation, even upon such subjects as free schools 
and the impropriety of making appropriations 
from the treasury for the support of sectarian in- 
stitutions, were precisely similar to those of his 
Protestant-American neighbors, though he him- 
self was a Catholic. Now a German or an Irish- 
man from one of the great cities would probably 
have retained many of his national peculiarities. 

It is from these same great cities that the worst 
legislators come. It is true that there are always 
among them a few cultivated and scholarly men 
who are well educated, and who stand on a higher 
and broader intellectual and moral plane than the 



72 American Ideals 

country members, but the bulk are very low in- 
deed. They are usually foreigners, of little or no 
education, with exceedingly misty ideas as to 
morality, and possessed of an ignorance so pro- 
found that it could only be called comic, were it 
not for the fact that it has at times such serious 
effects upon our laws. It is their ignorance, quite 
as much as actual viciousness, which makes it so 
difficult to procure the passage of good laws or 
prevent the passage of bad ones; and it is the 
most irritating of the many elements with which 
we have to contend in the fight for good govern- 
ment. 

Dark Side of the Legislative Picture 

Mention has been made above of the bribe- 
taking which undoubtedly at times occurs in the 
New York Legislature. This is what is commonly 
called "a delicate subject" with which to deal, 
and, therefore, according to our usual methods of 
handling delicate subjects, it is either never dis- 
cussed at all, or else discussed with the grossest 
exaggeration ; but most certainly there is nothing 
about which it is more important to know the truth. 

In each of the last three Legislatures there were 
a number of us who were interested in getting 
through certain measures which we deemed to be 
for the public good, but which were certain to be 



Phases of State Legislation ']z 



strongly opposed, some for political and some for 
pecuniary reasons. Now, to get through any such 
measure requires genuine hard work, a certain 
amotmt of parliamentary skill, a good deal of tact 
and courage, and, above all, a thorough knowledge 
of the men with whom one has to deal, and of the 
motives which actuate them. In other words, 
before taking any active steps, we had to " size up " 
our fellow-legislators to find out their past his- 
tory and present character and associates, to find 
out whether they were their own masters or were 
acting under the directions of somebody else, 
whether they were bright or stupid, etc. As a 
result, and after very careful study, conducted 
purely with the object of learning the truth, so 
that we might work more effectually, we came to 
the conclusion that about a third of the members 
were open to corrupt influences in some form or 
other; in certain sessions the proportion was 
greater and in some less. Now, it would, of 
course, be impossible for me or for any one else to 
prove in a court of law that these men were guilty, 
except, perhaps, in two or three cases; yet we 
felt absolutely confident that there was hardly a 
case in which our judgment as to the honesty of 
any given member was not correct. The two or 
three exceptional cases alluded to, where legal 
proof of guilt might have been forthcoming, were 
instances in which honest men were approached 



74 American Ideals 

by their colleagues at times when the need for 
votes was very great; but, even then, it would 
have been almost impossible to punish the offend- 
ers before a court, for it would have merely re- 
sulted in his denying what his accuser stated. 
Moreover, the members who had been approached 
would have been very reluctant to come forward, 
for each of them felt ashamed that his character 
should not have been well enough known to pre- 
vent any one's daring to speak to him on such a 
subject. And another reason why the few honest 
men who are approached (for the lobbyist rarely 
makes a mistake in his estimate of the men who 
will be apt to take bribes) do not feel like taking 
action in the matter is that a doubtful lawsuit will 
certainly follow, which will drag on so long that 
the public will come to regard all of the partici- 
pants with equal distrust, while in the end the 
decision is quite as likely to be against as to be 
for them. Take the Bradly-Sessions case, for ex- 
ample. This was an incident that occurred at the 
time of the faction-fight in the Republican ranks 
over the return of Mr. Conkling to the United 
States Senate after his resignation from that body. 
Bradly, an Assemblyman, accused Sessions, a 
State Senator, of attempting to bribe him. The 
affair dragged on for an indefinite time; no one 
was able actually to determine whether it was a 
case of blackmail on the one hand or of bribery 



Phases of State Legislation 75 

on the other; the vast majority of people recol- 
lected the names of both parties, but totally forgot 
which it was that was supposed to have bribed 
the other, and regarded both with equal disfavor; 
and the upshot has been that the case is now 
merely remembered as illustrating one of the most 
unsavory phases of the once-famous Halfbreed- 
Stalwart fight. 

DifficiiUies of Preventing and Punishing Corruption 

From the causes indicated, it is almost impos- 
sible to actually convict a legislator of bribe- 
taking; but at the same time, the character of a 
legislator, if bad, soon becomes a matter of com- 
mon notoriety, and no dishonest legislator can 
long keep his reputation good with honest men. 
If the constituents wish to know the character of 
their member they can easily find it out, and no 
member \\\\\ be dishonest if he thinks his con- 
stituents are looking at him; he presumes upon 
their ignorance or indifference. I do not see how 
bribe-taking among legislators can be stopped 
until the public conscience becomes awake to the 
matter. Then it will stop fast enough; for just 
as soon as politicians realize that the people are 
in earnest in wanting a thing done, they make 
haste to do it. The trouble is always in rousing 
the people sufficiently to make them take an 



76 American Ideals 

effective interest, — that is, in making them suffi- 
ciently in earnest to be willing to give a little of 
their time to the accomplishment of the object 
they have in view. 

Much the largest percentage of corrupt legisla- 
tors come from the great cities; indeed, the ma- 
jority of the assemblymen from the great cities 
are "very poor specimens" indeed, while, on the 
contrary, the Congressmen who go from them are 
generally pretty good men. This fact is only one 
of the many which go to establish the curious 
political law that in a great city the larger the con- 
stituency which elects a public servant, the more 
apt that servant is to be a good one; exactly as 
the mayor is almost certain to be infinitely supe- 
rior in character to the average alderman, or the 
average city judge to the average civil justice. 
This is because the public servants of compara- 
tively small importance are protected by their 
own insignificance from the consequences of their 
bad actions. Life is carried on at such a high 
pressure in the great cities, men's time is so fully 
occupied by their manifold and harassing interests 
and duties, and their knowledge of their neigh- 
bors is necessarily so limited, that they are only 
able to fix in their minds the characters and rec- 
ords of a few prominent men; the others they 
lump together without distinguishing between in- 
dividuals. They know whether the aldermen, as 



Phases of State Lesfislation ']^ 



a body, are to be admired or despised ; but they 
probably do not even know the name, far less the 
worth, of the particular alderman who represents 
their district; so it happens that their votes for 
aldermen or assemblymen are generally given with 
very little intelligence indeed, while, on the con- 
trary, they are fully competent to pass and exe- 
cute judgment upon as prominent an official as a 
mayor or even a congressman. Hence it follows 
that the latter have to give a good deal of atten- 
tion to the wishes and prejudices of the public at 
large, while a city assemblyman, though he always 
talks a great deal about the people, rarely, except 
in certain extraordinary cases, has to pay much 
heed to their wants. His political future depends 
far more upon the skill and success with which he 
cultivates the good- will of certain "bosses," or of 
certain cliques of politicians, or even of certain 
bodies and knots of men (such as compose a 
trade-union, or a collection of merchants in some 
special business, or the managers of a railroad) 
whose interests, being vitally affected by Albany 
legislation, oblige them closely to watch, and to 
try to punish or reward, the Albany legislators. 
These politicians or sets of interested individuals 
generally care very little for a man's honesty so 
long as he can be depended upon to do as they 
wish on certain occasions; and hence it often 
happens that a dishonest man who has sense 



78 American Ideals 

enough not to excite attention by any flagrant 
outrage may continue for a number of years to 
represent an honest constituency. 

The Constituents Largely to Blame 

Moreover, a member from a large city can 
often count upon the educated and intelligent men 
of his district showing the most gross ignorance 
and stupidity in political affairs. The much- 
lauded intelligent voter — the man of cultured 
mind, liberal education, and excellent intentions 
— at times performs exceedingly queer antics. 

The great public meetings to advance certain 
political movements irrespective of party, which 
have been held so frequently during the past few 
years, have undoubtedly done a vast amount of 
good; but the very men who attend these public 
meetings and inveigh against the folly and wick- 
edness of the politicians will sometimes on elec- 
tion day do things which have quite as evil effects 
as any of the acts of the men whom they very 
properly condemn. A recent instance of this is 
worth giving. In 1882 there was in the Assembly 
a young member from New York, who did as hard 
and effective work for the city of New York as 
has ever been done by any one. It was a pecu- 
liarly disagreeable year to be in the Legislature. 
The composition of that body was unusually bad. 
The more disreputable politicians relied upon it 



Phases of State Legislation 79 

to pass some of their schemes and to protect cer- 
tain of their members from the consequences of 
their own misdeeds. Demagogic measures were 
continually brought forward, nominally in the in- 
terests of the laboring classes, for which an honest 
and intelligent man could not vote, and yet which 
were jealously watched by, and received the 
hearty support of, not mere demagogues and agi- 
tators, but also a large number of perfectly honest 
though misguided workingmen. And, finally, cer- 
tain wealthy corporations attempted, by the most 
imscrupulous means, to rush through a number 
of laws in their own interest. The young member 
of whom we are speaking incurred by his course 
on these various measures the bitter hostility alike 
of the politicians, the demagogues, and the mem- 
bers of that most dangerous of all classes — the 
wealthy criminal class. He had also earned the 
gratitude of all honest citizens, and he got it — as 
far as words went. The better class of news- 
papers spoke well of him ; cultured and intelligent 
men generally — the well-to-do, prosperous people 
who belonged to the different social and literary 
clubs, and their followers — were loud in his praise. 
I call to mind one man who lived in his district 
who expressed great indignation that the poli- 
ticians should dare to oppose his re-election ; when 
told that it was to be hoped he would help to in- 
sure the legislator's return to Albany by himself 



8o American Ideals 

staying at the polls all day, he answered that 
he was very sorry, but he unfortunately had an 
engagement to go quail-shooting on election day ! 
Most respectable people, however, would un- 
doubtedly have voted for and re-elected the young 
member had it not been for the unexpected politi- 
cal movements that took place in the fall. A 
citizen's ticket, largely non-partisan in character, 
was run for certain local offices, receiving its sup- 
port from among those who claimed to be, and 
who undoubtedly were, the best men of both 
parties. The ticket contained the names of can- 
didates only for municipal offices, and had nothing 
whatever to do with the election of men to the 
Legislature; yet it proved absolutely impossible 
to drill this simple fact through the heads of a 
great many worthy people, who, when election 
day came round, declined to vote anything but the 
citizens' ticket and persisted in thinking that if 
no legislative candidate was on the ticket it was 
because, for some reason or other, the citizens' 
committee did not consider any legislative candi- 
date worth voting for. All over the city the bet- 
ter class of candidates for legislative offices lost 
from this cause votes which they had a right to 
expect, and in the particular district under con- 
sideration the loss was so great as to cause the 
defeat of the sitting member, or rather to elect 
him by so narrow a vote as to enable an unscrupu- 



Phases of State Legislation 8i 

lously partisan legislative majority to keep him 
out of his seat. 

It is this kind of ignorance of the simplest politi- 
cal matters among really good citizens, combined 
with their timidity, which is so apt to characterize 
a wealthy bourgeoisie, and with their short-sighted 
selfishness in being unwilling to take the smallest 
portion of time away from their business or 
pleasure to devote to public affairs, which renders 
it so easy for corrupt men from the city to keep 
their places in the Legislature. In the country 
the case is different. Here the constituencies, who 
are usually composed of honest though narrow- 
minded and bigoted individuals, generally keep a 
pretty sharp lookout on their members, and, as 
already said, the latter are apt to be fairly honest 
men. Even when they are not honest, they take 
good care to act perfectly well as regards all dis- 
trict matters, for most of the measures about 
which corrupt influences are at work relate to city 
affairs. The constituents of a country member 
know well how to judge him for those of his acts 
which immediately affect themselves; but as re- 
gards others they often have no means of forming 
an opinion, except through the newspapers, — 
more especially through the great metropolitan 
newspapers, — and they have gradually come to 
look upon all statements made by the latter with 
reference to the honesty or dishonesty of public 

VOL. 1.— 6. 



82 American Ideals 

men with extreme distrust. This is because our 
newspapers, including those which professedly 
stand as representatives of the highest culture of 
the community, have been in the habit of making 
such constant and reckless assaults upon the char- 
acters of even very good public men as to greatly 
detract from their influence when they attack one 
who is really bad. They paint black every one 
with whom they disagree. As a consequence, the 
average man, who knows they are partly wrong, 
thinks they may also be partly right; he con- 
cludes that no man is absolutely white and at the 
same time that no one is as black as he is painted ; 
and takes refuge in the belief that all alike are 
gray. It then becomes impossible to rouse him 
to make an effort either for a good man or against 
a scoundrel. Nothing helps dishonest politicians 
as much as this feeling; and among the chief 
instruments in its production we must number 
certain of our newspapers which are loudest in 
asserting that they stand on the highest moral 
plane. As for the other newspapers, those of 
frankly "sensational" character, such as the two 
which at present claim to have the largest circu- 
lation in New York, there is small need to charac- 
terize them; they form a very great promotive 
to public corruption and private vice, and are on 
the whole the most potent of all the forces for 
evil which are at work in the city. 



Phases of State Legislation ^3 

Perils of Legislative Life 

However, there can be no question that a great 
many men do deteriorate very much morally 
when they go to Albany. The last accusation 
most of us would think of bringing against that 
dear, dull, old Dutch city is that of being a fast 
place ; and yet there are plenty of members com- 
ing from out-of-the-way villages or quiet country 
towns on whom Albany has as bad an effect as 
Paris sometimes has on wealthy young Americans 
from the great seaboard cities. Many men go to 
the Legislature with the set purpose of making 
money ; but many others, who afterwards become 
bad, go there intending to do good work. These 
latter may be well-meaning, weak young fellows 
of some shallow brightness, who expect to make 
names for themselves; perhaps they are yoimg 
lawyers, or real-estate brokers, or small shop- 
keepers; they achieve but little success; they 
gradually become conscious that their business is 
broken up and that they have not enough ability 
to warrant any expectation of their continuing in 
public life ; some great temptation comes in their 
way (a corporation which expects to be relieved 
of, perhaps, a million dollars of taxes by the pas- 
sage of a bill can aft'ord to pay high for voters) ; 
they fall, and that is the end of them. Indeed, 
legislative life has temptations enough to make it 



84 American Ideals 

unadvisable for any weak man, whether young or 
old, to enter it. 

Allies of Vicious Legislators 

The array of vicious legislators is swelled by a 
number of men who really at bottom are not bad. 
Foremost among these are those most hopeless of 
beings who are handicapped by having some 
measure which they consider it absolutely neces- 
sary for the sake of their own future to "get 
through." One of these men will have a bill, for 
instance, appropriating a sum of money from the 
State treasury to clear out a river, dam the out- 
let of a lake, or drain a marsh ; it may be, although 
not usually so, proper enough in itself, but it is 
drawn up primarily in the interest of a certain 
set of his constituents who have given him clearly 
to understand that his continuance in their good 
graces depends upon his success in passing the bill. 
He feels that he must get it through at all hazards ; 
the bad men find this out and tell him he must 
count on their opposition unless he consents also 
to help their measures; he resists at first, but 
sooner or later yields ; and from that moment his 
fate is sealed, — so far as his ability to do any work 
of general good is concerned. 

A still larger number of men are good enough 
in themselves, but are "owned" by third parties. 



Phases of State Lecrislation 85 



o 



Usually, the latter are politicians who have abso- 
lute control of the district machine, or who are, 
at least, of very great importance in the political 
affairs of their district. A curious fact is that 
they are not invariably, though usually, of the 
same party as the member; for in some places, 
especially in the lower portions of the great cities, 
politics become purely a business, and in the 
squabbles for offices of emolument it becomes im- 
portant for a local leader to have supporters among 
all the factions. When one of these supporters is 
sent to a legislative body, he is allowed to act with 
the rest of his party on what his chief regards as 
the unimportant questions of party or public in- 
terest, but he has to come in to heel at once when 
any matter arises touching the said chief's power, 
pocket, or influence. 

Other members will be controlled by some 
wealthy private citizen who is not in politics, but 
who has business interests likely to be affected by 
legislation, and who is therefore willing to sub- 
scribe heavily to the campaign expenses of an in- 
dividual or of an association, so as to insure the 
presence in Albany of some one who will give him 
information and assistance. 

On one occasion there came before a committee 
of which I happened to be a member a perfectly 
proper bill in the interest of a certain corporation ; 
the majority of the committee, six in number, 



86 American Ideals 

were thoroughly bad men, who opposed the meas- 
ure with the hope of being paid to cease their 
opposition. When I consented to take charge of 
the bill I had stipulated that not a penny should 
be paid to insure its passage. It therefore became 
necessary to see what pressure could be brought 
to bear on the recalcitrant members; and, ac- 
cordingly, we had to find out who were the au- 
thors and sponsors of their political being. Three 
proved to be under the control of local statesmen 
of the same party as themselves and of equally 
bad moral character ; one was ruled by a politician 
of unsavory reputation from a different city ; the 
fifth, a Democrat, was owned by a Republican 
Federal official ; and the sixth by the president of 
a horse-car company. A couple of letters from 
these two magnates forced the last members men- 
tioned to change front on the bill with surprising 
alacrity. 

Nowadays, however, the greatest danger is that 
the member will be a servile tool of the " boss" or 
" machine" of his own party, in which case he can 
very rarely indeed be a good public servant. 

There are two classes of cases in which corrupt 
members get money. One is when a wealthy cor- 
poration buys through some measure which will 
be of great benefit to itself, although, perhaps an 
injury to the public at large; the other is when a 
member introduces a bill hostile to some moneyed 



Phases of State Legislation 87 



interest, with the expectation of being paid to let 
the matter drop. The latter, technically called a 
"strike," is much the most common; for, in spite 
of the outcry against them in legislative matters, 
corporations are more often sinned against than 
sinning. It is difficult, for reasons already given, 
in either case to convict the offending member, 
though we have very good laws against bribery. 
The reform has got to come from the people at 
large. It will be hard to make any very great 
improvement in the character of the legislators 
imtil respectable people become more fully awake 
to their duties, and until the newspapers become 
more truthful and less reckless in their statements. 
It is not a pleasant task to have to draw one 
side of legislative Hfe in such dark colors ; but as 
the side exists, and as the dark lines never can be 
rubbed out until we have manfully acknowledged 
that they are there and need rubbing out, it seems 
the falsest of false delicacy to refrain from dwell- 
ing upon them. But it would be most imjust to 
accept this partial truth as being the whole truth. 
We blame the Legislature for many evils, the ulti- 
mate cause for whose existence is to be found in 
our own shortcomings. 

The Other Side of the Picture 

There is a much brighter side to the picture, 
and this is the larger side, too. It would be 



88 American Ideals 

impossible to get together a body of more earn- 
est, upright, and disinterested men than the band 
of legislators, largely young men, who during the 
past three years have averted so much evil and 
accomplished so much good at Albany. They 
were able, at least partially, to put into actual 
practice the theories that had long been taught 
by the intellectual leaders of the country. And 
the Hfe of a legislator who is earnest in his efforts 
faithfully to perform his duty as a public servant, 
is harassing and laborious to the last degree. He 
is kept at work from eight to fourteen hours a 
day ; he is obliged to incur the bitterest hostility 
of a body of men as powerful as they are un- 
scrupulous, who are always on the watch to find 
out, or to make out, anything in his private 
or his public life which can be used against him ; 
and he has on his side either a but partially 
roused public opinion, or else a public opinion 
roused, it is true, but only blindly conscious 
of the evil from which it suffers, and alike 
ignorant and unwilling to avail itself of the proper 
remedy. 

This body of legislators, who, at any rate, 
worked honestly for what they thought right, were 
as a whole, quite unselfish, and were not treated 
particularly well by their constituents. Most of 
them soon got to realize the fact that if they 
wished to enjoy their brief space of political life 



Phases of State Legislation 89 



(and most, though not all of them, did enjoy it) 
they would have to make it a rule never to con- 
sider, in deciding how to vote upon any question, 
how their vote would affect their own political 
prospects. No man can do good service in the 
Legislature as long as he is worrying over the 
effect of his actions upon his own future. After 
having learned this, most of them got on very 
happily indeed. As a rule, and where no matter 
of vital principle is involved, a member is bound 
to represent the views of those who have elected 
him; but there are times when the voice of the 
people is anything but the voice of God, and then 
a conscientious man is equally boimd to disre- 
gard it. 

In the long run, and on the average, the public 
will usually do justice to its representatives; but 
it is a very rough, uneven, and long-delayed jus- 
tice. That is, judging from what I have myself 
seen of the way in which members were treated 
by their constituents, I should say that the 
chances of an honest man being retained in pub- 
lic life were about ten per cent, better than if he 
were dishonest, other things being equal. This is 
not a showing very creditable to us as a people; 
and the explanation is to be found in the short- 
comings peculiar to the different classes of our 
honest and respectable voters, — shortcomings 
which may be briefly outlined. 



90 American Ideals 

Shortcomings of the People who should Take Part 
in Political Work 

The people of means in all great cities have in 
times past shamefully neglected their political 
duties and have been contemptuously disregarded 
by the professional politicians in consequence. A 
number of them will get together in a large hall, 
will vociferously demand "reform," as if it were 
some concrete substance which could be handed 
out to them in slices, and will then disband with a 
feeling of the most serene self-satisfaction and the 
belief that they have done their entire duty as 
citizens and members of the community. It is 
an actual fact that four out of five of our wealthy 
and educated men, of those who occupy what is 
called good social position, are really ignorant of 
the nature of a caucus or a primary meeting, and 
never attend either. Now, under our form of 
government, no man can accomplish anything by 
himself ; he must work in combination with others, 
and the men of whom we are speaking will never 
carry their proper weight in the political affairs of 
the country until they have formed themselves 
into some organization, or else, which would be 
better, have joined some of the organizations 
already existing. But there seems often to be a 
certain lack of the robuster virtues in our edu- 
cated men, which makes them shrink from the 



Phases of State Legislation 91 

struggle and the inevitable contact with rough 
politicians (who must often be rudely handled 
before they can be forced to behave) ; while their 
lack of familiarity with their surroundings causes 
them to lack discrimination between the politi- 
cians who are decent and those who are not ; for 
in their eyes the two classes, both equally un- 
familiar, are indistinguishable. Another reason 
why this class is not of more consequence in poli- 
tics is that it is often really out of sympathy — or, 
at least, its more conspicuous members are — with 
the feelings and interests of the great mass of the 
American people ; and it is a discreditable fact that 
it is in this class that what has been most aptly 
termed the "colonial" spirit still survives. Until 
this survival of the spirit of colonial dependence is 
dead, those in whom it exists will serve chiefly as 
laughing-stocks to the shrewd, humorous, and 
prejudiced people who form nine tenths of our 
body-politic, and whose chief characteristics are 
their intensely American habits of thought and 
their surly intolerance of anything like subservi- 
ence to outside and foreign influences. 

From different causes the laboring classes, even 
when thoroughly honest at heart, often fail to 
appreciate honesty in their representatives. They 
are frequently not well informed in regard to the 
character of the latter, and they are apt to be led 
aside by the loud professions of the so-called 



92 American Ideals 

labor reformers, who are always promising to pro- 
cure by legislation the advantages which can only 
come to workingmen, or to any other men, by 
their individual or united energy, intelligence, and 
forethought. Very much has been accomplished 
by legislation for laboring men, by procuring 
mechanics' lien laws, factory laws, etc. ; and hence 
it often comes that they think legislation can ac- 
complish all things for them; and it is only nat- 
ural, for instance, that a certain proportion of 
their number should adhere to the demagogue 
who votes for a law to double the rate of wages 
rather than to the honest man who opposes it. 
When people are struggling for the necessaries of 
existence and vaguely feel, no matter how wrongly, 
that they are also struggling against an unjustly 
ordered system of life, it is hard to convince them . 
of the truth that an ounce of performance on their 
own part is worth a ton of legislative promises to 
change in some mysterious manner that life- 
system. 

In the country districts justice to a member is 
somewhat more apt to be done. When, as is so 
often the case, it is not done, the cause is usually 
to be sought for in the numerous petty jealousies 
and local rivalries which are certain to exist in 
any small community whose interests are narrow 
and most of whose members are acquainted with 
each other ; and, besides this, our country vote is 



Phases of State Lemslation 93 



essentially a Bourbon or Tory vote, being very 
slow to receive new ideas, very tenacious of old 
ones, and hence inclined to look with suspicion 
upon any one who tries to shape his course ac- 
cording to some standard differing from that 
which is already in existence. 

The actual work of procuring the passage of a 
bill through the Legislature is in itself far from 
slight. The hostility of the actively bad has to 
be discounted in advance, and the indifference of 
the passive majority, who are neither very good 
nor very bad, has to be overcome. This can usu- 
ally be accomplished only by stirring up their 
constituencies; and so, besides the constant 
watchfulness over the course of the measure 
through both houses and the continual debating 
and parliamentary fencing which is necessary, it 
is also indispensable to get the people of districts 
not directly affected by the bill alive to its im- 
portance, so as to induce their representatives to 
vote for it. Thus, when the bill to establish a 
State Park at Niagara was on its passage, it was 
found that the great majority of the country 
members were opposed to it, fearing that it might 
conceal some land-jobbing scheme, and also fear- 
ing that their constituents, whose vice is not ex- 
travagance, would not countenance so great an 
expenditure of public money. It was of no use 
arguing with the members, and instead the country 



94 American Ideals 

newspapers were flooded with letters, pamphlets 
were circulated, visits and personal appeals were 
made, until a sufficient number of these members 
changed front to enable us to get the lacking votes. 

Life in the Legislature 

As already said, some of us who usually acted 
together took a great deal of genuine enjoyment 
out of our experience at Albany. We liked the 
excitement and perpetual conflict, the necessity 
for putting forth all our powers to reach our ends, 
and the feeling that we were really being of some 
use in the world ; and if we were often both sad- 
dened and angered by the viciousness and igno- 
rance of some of our colleagues, yet, in return, the 
latter many times unwittingly furnished us a good 
deal of amusement by their preposterous actions 
and speeches. Some of these are worth repeat- 
ing, though they can never, in repetition, seem 
what they were when they occurred. The names 
and circumstances, of course, have been so 
changed as to prevent the possibiHty of the real 
heroes of them being recognized. It must be 
understood that they stand for the exceptional 
and not the ordinary workings of the average 
les^islative intellect. I have heard more sound 
sense than foolishness talked in Albany, but to 
record the former would only bore the reader. 
And we must bear in mind that while the igno- 



Phases of State Legislation 95 

ranee of some of our representatives warrants our 
saying that they should not be in the Legislature, 
it does not at all warrant our condemning the 
system of government which permits them to be 
sent there. There is no system so good that it 
has not some disadvantages. The only way to 
teach our foreign-born fellow-citizens how to gov- 
ern themselves is to give each the full rights pos- 
sessed by other American citizens; and it is not 
to be wondered at if they at first show themselves 
unskilful in the exercise of these rights. It has 
been my experience, moreover, in the Legislature, 
that when Hans or Paddy does turn out really 
well, there are very few native Americans indeed 
who do better. A very large number of the ablest 
and most disinterested and public-spirited citizens 
in New York are by birth Germans; and their 
names are towers of strength in the community. 
When I had to name a committee which was to 
do the most difficult, dangerous, and important 
work that came before the Legislature at all dur- 
ing my presence in it, I chose three of my four 
colleagues from among those of my fellow-legisla- 
tors who were Irish either by birth or descent. 
One of the warmest and most disinterested friends 
I have ever had or hope to have in New York 
politics is by birth an Irishman, and is also as 
genuine and good an American citizen as is to be 
found within the United States. 



96 American Ideals 

A good many of the Yankees in the house would 
blunder time and again ; but their blunders were 
generally merely stupid and not at all amusing, 
while, on the contrary, the errors of those who 
were of Milesian extraction always possessed a 
most refreshing originality. 

Incidents of Legislative Experience 

In 1882 the Democrats in the house had a clear 
majority, but were for a long time unable to effect 
an organization, owing to a faction-fight in their 
own ranks between the Tammany and anti-Tam- 
many members, each side claiming the lion's share 
of the spoils. After a good deal of bickering, the 
anti-Tammany men drew up a paper containing a 
series of propositions, and submitted it to their 
opponents, with the prefatory remark, in writing, 
that it was an ultimatum. The Tammany mem- 
bers were at once summoned to an indignation 
meeting, their feelings closely resembling those of 
the famous fish-wife who was called a parallelo- 
pipedon. None of them had any very accurate 
idea as to what the word tdtimatum meant; but 
that it was intensely offensive, not to say abusive, 
in its nature, they did not question for a moment. 
It was felt that some equivalent and equally strong 
term by which to call Tammany's proposed coun- 
ter-address must be found immediately; but, as 



Phases of State Legislation 97 

the Latin vocabulary of the members was Hmited, 
it was some time before a suitable term was forth- 
coming. Finally, by a happy inspiration, some 
gentlemen of classical education remembered the 
phrase ipse dixit, it was at once felt to be the very 
phrase required by the peculiar exigencies of the 
case, and next day the reply appeared, setting 
forth with well-satisfied gravity that, in response 
to the County Democracy's ''ultimatum," Tam- 
many herewith produced her ''ipse dixit." 

Public servants of higher grade than aldermen 
or assemblymen sometimes give words a wider 
meaning than would be found in the dictionary. 
In many parts of the United States, owing to a 
curious series of historical associations (which, by 
the way, it would be interesting to trace), any- 
thing foreign and un-English is called " Dutch," 
and it was in this sense that a member of a recent 
Congress used the term when, in speaking in favor 
of a tariff on works of art, he told of the reluctance 
with which he saw the productions of native 
artists exposed to competition " with Dutch daubs 
from Italy"; a sentence pleasing alike from its 
alliteration and from its bold disregard of geo- 
graphic trivialities. 

Often an orator of this sort will have his atten- 
tion attracted by some high-sounding word, which 
he has not before seen, and which he treasures up 
to use in his next rhetorical flight, without regard 

VOL. I. — 7. 



98 American Ideals 

to the exact meaning. There was a laboring 
man's advocate in the last Legislature, one of 
whose efforts attracted a good deal of attention 
from his magnificent heedlessness of technical ac- 
curacy in the use of similes. He was speaking 
against the convict contract-labor system, and 
wound up an already sufficiently remarkable ora- 
tion with the still more startling ending that the 
system "was a vital cobra which was swamping 
the lives of the laboring men." Now, he had evi- 
dently carefully put together the sentence before- 
hand, and the process of mental synthesis by 
which he built it up must have been curious. 
"Vital" was, of course, used merely as an adjec- 
tive of intensity; he was a little uncertain in his 
ideas as to what a "cobra" was, but took it for 
granted that it was some terrible manifestation of 
nature, possibly hostile to man, like a volcano, or 
a cyclone, or Niagara, for instance ; then " swamp- 
ing" was chosen as describing an operation very 
likely to be performed by Niagara, or a cyclone, 
or a cobra ; and behold, the sentence was complete. 
Sometimes a common phrase will be given a 
new meaning. Thus, the mass of legislation is 
strictly local in its character. Over a thousand 
bills come up for consideration in the course of 
a session, but a very few of which affect the in- 
terests of the State at large. The latter and the 
more important private bills are, or ought to be, 



Phases of State Legislation 99 

carefully studied by each member; but it is a 
physical impossibility for any one man to examine 
the countless local bills of small importance. For 
these we have to trust to the member for the dis- 
trict affected, and when one comes up the response 
to any inquiry about it is usually, "Oh, it's a lo- 
cal bill, affecting So-and-so's district ; he is respon- 
sible for it." By degrees, some of the members 
get to use "local" in the sense of unimport- 
ant, and a few of the assemblymen of doubtful 
honesty gradually come to regard it as meaning 
a bill of no pecimiary interest to themselves. 
There was a smug little rascal in one of the last 
Legislatures who might have come out of one of 
Lever's novels. He was undoubtedly a bad case, 
but had a genuine sense of humor, and his " bulls" 
made him the delight of the house. One day I 
came in late, just as a bill was being voted on, 
and, meeting my friend, hailed him, "Hello, Pat, 
what's up? what's this they're voting on?" to 
which Pat replied, with contemptuous indifference 
to the subject, but with a sly twinkle in his eye, 
" Oh, some unimportant measure, sorr; some local 
bill or other — a constitutional amendment!'' 

The old Dublin Parliament never listened to a 
better specimen of a bull than was contained in 
the speech of a very genial and pleasant friend 
of mine, a really finished orator, who, in the 
excitement attendant upon receiving Governor 



loo American Ideals 

Cleveland's message vetoing the five-cent-fare bill, 
uttered the following sentence: "Mr. Speaker, I 
recognize the hand that crops out in that veto; 
I have heard it before!'' 

One member rather astonished us one day by 
his use of the word "shibboleth." He had evi- 
dently concluded that this was merely a more 
elegant synonym of the good old word " shillalah," 
and, in reproving a colleague for opposing a bill 
to increase the salaries of public laborers, he said, 
very impressively, "The throuble wid the young 
man is, that he uses the wurrd ' economy ' as a 
shibboleth, wherewith to strike the workingman." 
Afterwards he changed the metaphor, and spoke 
of a number of us as using the word " reform" as 
a shibboleth behind which to cloak our evil 
intentions. 

A mixture of classical and constitutional misin- 
formation was displayed a few sessions past in 
the State Assembly when I was a member of the 
Legislature. It was on the occasion of that 
annual nuisance, the debate upon the Catholic 
Protectory item of the Supply Bill. Every year 
some one who is desirous of bidding for the Catho- 
lic vote introduces this bill, which appropriates a 
sum of varying dimensions for the support of the 
Catholic Protectory, an excellent institution, but 
one which has no right whatever to come to the 
State for support ; each year the insertion of the 



Phases of State Leeislation loi 



Z^' 



item is opposed by a small number of men, in- 
cluding the more liberal Catholics themselves, on 
proper grounds, and by a larger number from 
simple bigotry — a fact which was shown two years 
ago, when many of the most bitter opponents of 
this measure cheerfully supported a similar and 
equally objectionable one in aid of a Protestant 
institution. On the occasion referred to there 
were two assemblymen, both Celtic gentlemen, 
who were rivals for the leadership of the minority ; 
one of them a stout, red-faced man, who may go 
by the name of the " Colonel," owing to his having 
seen service in the army; while the other was a 
dapper, voluble fellow, who had at one time been 
a civil justice and was called the " Judge." Some- 
body was opposing the insertion of the item on 
the ground (perfectly just, by the way) that it 
was unconstitutional, and he dwelt upon this 
objection at some length. The Judge, who knew 
nothing of the constitution, except that it was 
continually being quoted against all of his favorite 
projects, fidgeted about for some time and at last 
jumped up to know if he might ask the gentleman 
a question. The latter said, "Yes"; and the 
Judge went on, "I'd Hke to know if the gintle- 
man has ever personally seen the Catholic Pro- 
tectoree?" "No, I have n't," said his astonished 
opponent. " Then phwat do you mane by talking 
about its being unconstitootional ? It's no more 



I02 American Ideals 

unconstitootional than you are!" Then, turning 
to the house, with slow and withering sarcasm, he 
added, " The throuble wid the gintleman is that 
he okkipies what lawyers would call a kind of a 
quasi-position upon this bill," and sat down amid 
the applause of his followers. 

His rival, the Colonel, felt he had gained alto- 
gether too much glory from the encounter, and 
after the nonplussed countryman had taken his 
seat, he stalked solemnly over to the desk of the 
elated Judge, looked at him majestically for a 
moment, and said, "You'll excuse my mention- 
ing, sorr, that the gintleman who has just sat down 
knows more law in a wake than you do in a month ; 
and more than that, Mike Shaunnessy, phwat do 
you mane by quotin' Latin on the flure of this 
house, when you don't know the alpha and oinayga 
of the language!'' and back he walked, leaving the 
Judge in humiliated submission behind him. 

The Judge was always falling foul of the Con- 
stitution. Once, when defending one of his bills 
which made a small but wholly indefensible ap- 
propriation of State money for a private purpose, 
he asserted "that the Constitution didn't touch 
little things like that"; and on another occasion 
he remarked to me that he "never allowed the 
Constitution to come between friends." 

The Colonel was at that time chairman of a 
committee, before which there sometimes came 



Phases of State Legislation 103 

questions affecting the interests or supposed in- 
terests of labor. The committee was hopelessly 
bad in its composition, most of the members being 
either very corrupt or exceedingly inefficient. The 
Colonel generally kept order with a good deal of 
dignity; indeed, when, as not infrequently hap- 
pened, he had looked upon the rye that was 
flavored with lemon-peel, his sense of personal dig- 
nity grew till it became fairly majestic, and he 
ruled the committee with a rod of iron. At one 
time a bill had been introduced (one of the several 
score of preposterous measures that annually 
make their appearance purely for purposes of bun- 
combe), by whose terms all laborers in the public 
works of great cities were to receive three dollars 
a day — double the market price of labor. To 
this bill, by the way, an amendment was after- 
wards offered in the house by some gentleman 
with a sense of humor, which was to make it read 
that all the inhabitants of great cities were to 
receive three dollars a day and the privilege of 
laboring on the public works if they chose; the 
original author of the bill questioning doubtfully 
if the amendment " did n't make the measure too 
sweeping." The measure was, of course, of no 
consequence whatever to the genuine laboring 
men, but was of interest to the professional labor 
agitators; and a body of the latter requested 
leave to appear before the committee. This was 



104 American Ideals 

granted, but on the appointed day the chairman 
turned up in a condition of such portentous dig- 
nity as to make it evident that he had been on a 
spree of protracted duration. Down he sat at the 
head of the table and glared at the committeemen, 
while the latter, whose faces would not have 
looked amiss in a rogue's gallery, cowered before 
him. The first speaker was a typical professional 
laboring man; a sleek, oily, little fellow, with a 
black mustache, who had never done a stroke of 
work in his life. He felt confident that the 
Colonel would favor him, — a confidence soon to 
be rudely shaken, — and began with a deprecatory 
smile : 

"Humble though I am " 

Rap, rap, went the chairman's gavel, and the 
following dialogue occurred : 

Chairman (with dignity). "What's that you 
said you were, sir?" 

Professional Workman (decidedly taken aback). 
"I — I said I was humble, sir!" 

Chairman (reproachfully) . ' ' Are you an Amer- 
ican citizen, sir?" 

P. W. "Yes, sir." 

Chairman (with emphasis). "Then you're the 
equal of any man in this State ! Then you 're the 
equal of any man on this committee! Don't let 
me hear you call yourself humble again! Go on, 
sir!" 



Phases of State Legislation 105 

After this warning the advocate managed to 
keep clear of the rocks until, having worked him- 
self up to quite a pitch of excitement, he incau- 
tiously exclaimed, " But the poor man has no 
friends!" which brought the Colonel down on him 
at once. Rap, rap, went his gavel, and he 
scowled grimly at the offender while he asked 
with deadly deliberation : 

"What did you say that time, sir?" 

P. W. (hopelessly). "I said the poor man had 
no friends, sir." 

Chairman (with sudden fire). "Then you lied, 
sir! I am the poor man's friend! so are my col- 
leagues, sir!" (Here the rogues' gallery tried to 
look benevolent.) "Speak the truth, sir!" (with 
sudden change from the manner admonitory to 
the manner mandatory). "Now, you sit down 
quick, or get out of this somehow!" 

This put an end to the sleek gentleman, and his 
place was taken by a fellow-professional of an- 
other type — a great, burly man, who would talk 
to you on private matters in a perfectly natural 
tone of voice, but who, the moment he began to 
speak of the Wrongs (with a capital W) of Labor 
(with a capital L), bellowed as if he had been a 
bull of Bashan. The Colonel, by this time pretty 
far gone, eyed him malevolently, swaying to and 
fro in his chair. However, the first effect of 
the fellow's oratory was soothing rather than 



io6 American Ideals 

otherwise, and produced the unexpected result of 
sending the chairman fast asleep sitting bolt up- 
right. But in a minute or two, as the man warmed 
up to his work, he gave a peculiarly resonant howl 
which waked the Colonel up. The latter came to 
himself with a jerk, looked fixedly at the audience, 
caught sight of the speaker, remembered having 
seen him before, forgot that he had been asleep, 
and concluded that it must have been on some 
previous day. Hammer, hammer, went the gavel, 
and — 

"I've seen you before, sir!" 

"You have not," said the man. 

" Don't tell me I lie, sir!" responded the Colonel, 
with sudden ferocity. "You've addressed this 
committee on a previous day!" 

"I've never — " began the man; but the 
Colonel broke in again : 

"Sit down, sir! The dignity of the chair must 
be preserved! No man shall speak to this com- 
mittee twice. The committee stands adjourned." 
And with that he stalked majestically out of the 
room, leaving the committee and delegation to 
gaze sheepishly into each other's faces. 

Outsiders 

After all, outsiders furnish quite as much fun as 
the legislators themselves. The number of men 



Phases of State Legislation 107 

who persist in writing one letters of praise, abuse, 
and advice on every conceivable subject is appal- 
ling ; and the writers are of every grade, from the 
lunatic and the criminal up. The most difficult 
to deal with are the men with hobbies. There is 
the Protestant fool, who thinks that our liberties 
are menaced by the machinations of the Church 
of Rome; and his companion idiot, who wants 
legislation against all secret societies, especially 
the Masons. Then there are the believers in 
"isms" of whom the woman-suffragists stand in 
the first rank. Now, I have always been a be- 
liever in woman's rights, but I must confess I 
have never seen such a hopelessly impracticable 
set of persons as the woman-suffragists who came 
up to Albany to get legislation. They simply 
would not draw up their measures in proper form ; 
when I pointed out to one of them that their pro- 
posed bill was drawn up in direct defiance of cer- 
tain of the sections of the Constitution of the 
State he blandly replied that he did not care at 
all for that, because the measure had been drawn 
up so as to be in accord with the Constitution of 
Heaven. There was no answer to this beyond the 
very obvious one that Albany was in no way akin 
to Heaven. The ultra-temperance people — not 
the moderate and sensible ones — are quite as im- 
pervious to common sense. 

A member's correspondence is sometimes amus- 



io8 American Ideals 

ing. A member receives shoals of letters of ad- 
vice, congratulation, entreaty, and abuse, half of 
them anonymous. Most of these are stupid ; but 
some are at least out of the common. 

I had some constant correspondents. One 
lady in the western part of the State wrote me a 
weekly disquisition on woman's rights. A Buffalo 
clergyman spent two years on a one-sided corre- 
spondence about prohibition. A gentleman of 
Syracuse wrote me such a stream of essays and re- 
quests about the charter of that city that I feared 
he would drive me into a lunatic asylum ; but he 
anticipated matters by going into one himself. A 
New Yorker at regular intervals sent up a re- 
quest that I would "reintroduce" the Dongan 
charter, which had lapsed two centuries before. A 
gentleman interested in a proposed law to protect 
primaries took to telegraphing daily questions as 
to its progi-ess — a habit of which I broke him by 
sending in response telegrams of several hundred 
words each, which I was careful not to prepay. 

There are certain legislative actions which must 
be taken in a purely Pickwickian sense. Notable 
among these are the resolutions of sympathy for 
the alleged oppressed patriots and peoples of 
Europe. These are generally directed against 
England, as there exists in the lower strata of 
political life an Anglophobia quite as objection- 
able as the Anglomania of the higher social circles. 



Phases of State Leo^islation 109 



£3' 



As a rule, these resolutions are to be classed as 
simply bouffe affairs; they are commonly intro- 
duced by some ambitious legislator — often, I 
regret to say, a native American — who has a 
large foreign vote in his district. During my 
term of service in the Legislature, resolutions were 
introduced demanding the recall of Minister Low- 
ell, assailing the Czar for his conduct towards the 
Russian Jews, sympathizing with the Land League 
and the Dutch Boers, etc.; the passage of each 
of which we strenuously and usually success- 
fully opposed, on the ground that while we would 
warmly welcome any foreigner who came here 
and in good faith assumed the duties of American 
citizenship, we had a right to demand in return 
that he should not bring any of his race or na- 
tional antipathies into American political life. 
Resolutions of this character are sometimes un- 
doubtedly proper; but in nine cases out of ten 
they are wholly unjustifiable. An instance of this 
sort of thing which took place not at Albany may 
be cited. Recently the Board of Aldermen of one 
of our great cities received a stinging rebuke, 
which it is to be feared the aldermanic intellect 
was too dense fully to appreciate. The aldermen 
passed a resolution "condemning" the Czar of 
Russia for his conduct towards his fellow-citizens 
of Hebrew faith and " demanding" that he should 
forthwith treat them better; this was forwarded 



no American Ideals 

to the Russian Minister, with a request that it be 
sent to the Czar. It came back forty -eight hours 
afterwards, with a note on the back by one of the 
under-secretaries of the legation to the effect that 
as he was not aware that Russia had any diplo- 
matic relations with this particular Board of 
Aldermen and as, indeed, Russia was not officially 
cognizant of their existence, and, moreover, was 
wholly indifferent to their opinions on any con- 
ceivable subject, he herewith returned them their 
kind communication.^ 

In concluding, I would say that while there is 
so much evil at Albany, and so much reason for 
our exerting ourselves to bring about a better 
state of things, yet there is no cause for being 
disheartened or for thinking that it is hopeless to 
expect improvement. On the contrary, the stan- 
dard of legislative morals is certainly higher than 
it was fifteen years ago or twenty-five years ago. 
In the future it may either improve or retrograde, 
by fits and starts, for it will keep pace exactly 

I A few years later a member of the Italian Legation 
"scored" heavily on one of our least pleasant national pe- 
culiarities. An Italian had just been lynched in Colorado, 
and an Italian paper in New York bitterly denounced the 
Italian Minister for his supposed apathy in the matter. The 
member of the Legation in question answered that the accu- 
sations were most unjust, for the Minister had worked zeal- 
ously until he found that the deceased "had taken out his 
naturahzation papers, and was entitled to all the privileges 
of American citizenship." 



Phases of State Legislation 1 1 1 

with the awakening of the popular mind to the 
necessity of having honest and intelHgent repre- 
sentatives in the State Legislature.^ 

I have had opportunity of knowing something 
about the workings of but a few of our other State 
legislatures: from what I have seen and heard, 
I should say that we stand about on a par with 
those of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Illinois; 
above that of Louisiana ; and below those of Ver- 
mont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Wyo- 
ming, as well as below the national Legislature at 
Washington. But the moral status of a legisla- 
tive body, especially in the West, often varies 
widely from year to year. 

^ At present, twelve years later, I should say that there 
was rather less personal corruption in the Legislature; but 
also less independence and greater subservience to the ma- 
chine, which is even less responsive to honest and enlightened 
pubUc opinion. 



CHAPTER VI 

MACHINE POLITICS IN NEW YORK CITY * 

IN New York City, as in most of our other great 
municipalities, the direction of political affairs 
has been for many years mainly in the hands 
of a class of men who make politics their regular 
business and means of livelihood. These men 
are able to keep their grip only by means of the 
singularly perfect way in which they have suc- 
ceeded in organizing their respective parties and 
factions; and it is in consequence of the clock- 
work regularity and efficiency with which these 
several organizations play their parts, alike for 
good and for evil, that they have been nicknamed 
by outsiders " machines," while the men who take 
part in the control, or, as they would themselves 
say, "run" them, now form a well-recognized and 
fairly well-defined class in the community, and are 
familiarly known as machine politicians. It may 
be of interest to sketch in outline some of the 
characteristics of these men and of their ma- 
chines, the methods by which and the objects for 
which they work, and the reasons for their success 
in the political field. 

* The Century, November, 1886. 
in 



Machine Politics 113 

The terms "machine" and "machine poHtician" 
are now undoubtedly used ordinarily in a reproach- 
ful sense; but it does not at all follow that this 
sense is always the right one. On the contrary, 
the machine is often a very powerful instrument 
for good ; and a machine politician really desirous 
of doing honest work on behalf of the community 
is fifty times as useful an ally as is the average 
philanthropic outsider. Indeed, it is of course 
true that any political organization (and abso- 
lutely no good work can be done in politics with- 
out an organization) is a machine ; and any 
man who perfects and uses this organization is 
himself, to a certain extent, a machine politician. 
In the rough, however, the feeling against ma- 
chine politics and politicians is tolerably well jus- 
tified by the facts, although this statement really 
reflects most severely upon the educated and 
honest people who largely hold themselves aloof 
from public life and show a curious incapacity for 
fulfilling their public duties. 

The organizations that are commonly and dis- 
tinctively known as machines are those belonging 
to the two great recognized parties, or to their 
factional subdivisions; and the reason why the 
word "machine" has come to be used, to a certain 
extent, as a term of opprobrium is to be found in 
the fact that these organizations are now run by 
the leaders very largely as business concerns to 

VOL. I.— 8. 



114 American Ideals 

benefit themselves and their followers, with little 
regard to the community at large. This is nat- 
ural enough. The men having control and doing 
all the work have gradually come to have the 
same feeling about politics that other men have 
about the business of a merchant or manufac- 
turer; it was too much to expect that if left 
entirely to themselves they would continue disin- 
terestedly to work for the benefit of others. Many 
a machine poHtician who is to-day a most un- 
wholesome influence in our politics is in private 
life quite as respectable as any one else ; only he 
has forgotten that his business affects the state at 
large, and, regarding it as merely his own private 
concern, he has carried into it the same selfish 
spirit that actuates in business matters the ma- 
jority of the average mercantile community. A 
merchant or manufacturer works his business, as 
a rule, purely for his own benefit, without any 
regard whatever for the community at large. The 
merchant uses all his influence for a low tariff, 
and the manufacturer is even more strenuously in 
favor of protection, not at all from any theory of 
abstract right, but because of self-interest. Each 
views such a political question as the tariff, not 
from the standpoint of how it will affect the 
nation as a whole, but merely from that of how 
it will affect him personally. If a community 
were in favor of protection, but nevertheless per- 



Machine Politics 115 

mitted all the governmental machinery to fall into 
the hands of importing merchants, it would be 
small cause for wonder if the latter shaped the 
laws to suit themselves, and the chief blame, after 
all, would rest with the supine and lethargic 
majority which failed to have enough energy to 
take charge of their own affairs. Our machine 
politicians in actual life act in just this same way ; 
their actions are very often dictated by selfish 
motives, with but little regard for the people at 
large, though, like the merchants, they often hold 
a very high standard of honor on certain points ; 
they therefore need continually to be watched and 
opposed by those who wish to see good govern- 
ment. But, after all, it is hardly to be wondered 
at that they abuse power which is allowed to fall 
into their hands owing to the ignorance or timid 
indifference of those who by rights should them- 
selves keep it. 

In a society properly constituted for true demo- 
cratic government — in a society such as that seen 
in many of our country towns, for example — 
machine rule is impossible. But in New York, as 
well as in most of our other great cities, the con- 
ditions favor the growth of ring or boss rule. The 
chief causes thus operating against good govern- 
ment are the moral and mental attitudes towards 
politics assumed by different sections of the voters. 
A large number of these are simply densely igno- 



ii6 American Ideals 

rant, and, of course, such are apt to fall under the 
influence of cunning leaders, and even if they do 
right it is by hazard merely. The criminal class in 
a great city is always of some size, while what may 
be called the potentially criminal class is still 
larger. Then there is a great class of laboring 
men, mostly of foreign birth or parentage, who at 
present both expect too much from legislation and 
yet at the same time realize too little how power- 
fully though indirectly they are affected by a bad 
or corrupt government. In many wards the over- 
whelming majority of the voters do not realize 
that heavy taxes fall ultimately upon them, and 
actually view with perfect complacency burdens 
laid by their representatives upon the tax-payers, 
and, if anything, approve of a hostile attitude 
towards the latter — having a vague feeling of ani- 
mosity towards them as possessing more than 
their proper proportion of the world's good things, 
and sharing with most other human beings the 
capacity to bear with philosophic equanimity ills 
merely affecting one's neighbors. When power- 
fully roused on some financial, but still more on 
some sentimental, question, this same laboring 
class will throw its enormous and usually decisive 
weight into the scale which it believes inclines to 
the right; but its members are often curiously 
and cynically indifferent to charges of corruption 
against favorite heroes or demagogues, so long as 



Machine Politics 117 

these charges do not imply betrayal of their own 
real or fancied interests. Thus an alderman or 
assemblyman representing certain wards may 
make as much money as he pleases out of corpo- 
rations without seriously jeopardizing his stand- 
ing with his constituents ; but if he once, whether 
from honest or dishonest motives, stands by a 
corporation when the interests of the latter are 
supposed to conflict with those of "the people," 
it is all up with him. These voters are, moreover, 
very emotional ; they value in a public man what 
we are accustomed to consider virtues only to be 
taken into account when estimating private char- 
acter. Thus, if a man is open-handed and warm- 
hearted, they consider it as a fair offset to his 
being a little bit shaky when it comes to applying 
the eighth commandment to affairs of state. I 
have more than once heard the statement, " He is 
very liberal to the poor," advanced as a perfectly 
satisfactory answer to the charge that a certain 
pubHc man was corrupt. Moreover, workingmen, 
whose lives are passed in one unceasing round of 
narrow and monotonous toil, are not unnaturally 
inclined to pay heed to the demagogues and pro- 
fessional labor advocates who promise if elected 
to try to pass laws to better their condition ; they 
are hardly prepared to understand or approve the 
American doctrine of government, which is that 
the state cannot ordinarily attempt to better the 



ii8 American Ideals 

condition of a man or a set of men, but can merely 
see that no wrong is done him or them by any one 
else, and that all alike have a fair chance in the 
struggle for life — a struggle wherein, it may as 
well at once be freely though sadly acknowledged, 
very many are bound to fail, no matter how 
ideally perfect any given system of government 
may be. 

Of course, it must be remembered that all these 
general statements are subject to an immense 
number of individual exceptions; there are tens 
of thousands of men who work with their hands 
for their daily bread and yet put into actual prac- 
tice that sublime virtue of disinterested adherence 
to the right, even when it seems likely merely to 
benefit others, and those others better off than 
they themselves are; for they vote for honesty 
and cleanliness, in spite of great temptation to do 
the opposite, and in spite of their not seeing how 
any immediate benefit will result to themselves. 

Reasons for the Neglect of Public Duties by Respect- 
able Men in Easy Circumstances 

This class is composed of the great bulk of the 
men who range from well-to-do up to very rich; 
and of these the former generally and the latter 
almost universally neglect their political duties, 
for the most part rather pluming themselves upon 
their good conduct if they so much as vote on 



Machine Politics 119 

election day. This largely comes from the tre- 
mendous wear and tension of life in our great 
cities. Moreover, the men of small means with 
us are usually men of domestic habits; and this 
very devotion to home, which is one of their chief 
virtues, leads them to neglect their public duties. 
They work hard as clerks, mechanics, small 
tradesmen, etc., all day long, and when they get 
home in the evening they dislike to go out. If 
they do go to a ward meeting they find them- 
selves isolated and strangers both to the men 
whom they meet and to the matter on which they 
have to act ; for in the city a man is quite as sure 
to know next to nothing about his neighbors as 
in the country he is to be intimately acquainted 
with them. In the country the people of a neigh- 
borhood, when they assemble in one of their local 
conventions, are already well acquainted and 
therefore able to act together with effect ; whereas 
in the city, even if the ordinary citizens do come 
out, they are totally unacquainted with one an- 
other, and are as helplessly unable to oppose the 
disciplined ranks of the professional politicians as 
is the case with a mob of freshmen in one of our 
colleges when in danger of being hazed by the 
sophomores. Moreover, the pressure of com- 
petition in city life is so keen that men often have 
as much as they can do to attend to their own 
affairs, and really hardly have the leisure to look 



I20 American Ideals 

after those of the pubHc. The general tendency 
everywhere is toward the speciaHzation of func- 
tions, and this holds good as well in politics as 
elsewhere. 

The reputable private citizens of small means 
thus often neglect to attend to their public duties 
because to do so would perhaps interfere with 
their private business. This is bad enough, but 
the case is worse with the really wealthy, who still 
more generally neglect these same duties, partly 
because not to do so would interfere with their 
pleasure, and partly from a combination of other 
motives, all of them natural but none of them 
creditable. A successful merchant, well dressed, 
pompous, self-important, unused to any life out- 
side of the counting-room, and accustomed be- 
cause of his very success to be treated with 
deferential regard, as one who stands above the 
common run of humanity, naturally finds it very 
unpleasant to go to a caucus or a primary where he 
has to stand on an equal footing with his groom 
and day-laborers, and, indeed, may discover that 
the latter, thanks to their faculty for combina- 
tion, are rated higher in the scale of political 
importance than he is himself. In all the large 
cities of the North the wealthier, or, as they would 
prefer to style themselves, the "upper" classes, 
tend distinctly towards the bourgeois type; and 
an individual in the bourgeois stage of develop- 



Machine Politics 121 

ment, while honest, industrious, and virtuous, is 
also not unapt to be a miracle of timid and short- 
sighted selfishness. The commercial classes are 
only too likely to regard everything merely from 
the standpoint of "Does it pay?" and many a 
merchant does not take any part in politics be- 
cause he is short-sighted enough to think that it 
will pay him better to attend purely to making 
money, and too selfish to be willing to undergo 
any trouble for the sake of abstract duty; while 
the younger men of this type are too much en- 
grossed in their various social pleasures to be will- 
ing to give their time to anything else. It is also 
unfortunately true, especially throughout New 
England and the Middle States, that the general 
tendency among people of culture and high edu- 
cation has been to neglect and even to look down 
upon the rougher and manlier virtues, so that an 
advanced state of intellectual development is too 
often associated with a certain effeminacy of char- 
acter. Our more intellectual men often shrink 
from the raw coarseness and the eager struggle of 
political life as if they were women. Now, how- 
ever refined and virtuous a man may be, he is yet 
entirely out of place in the American body-politic 
unless he is himself of sufficiently coarse fibre and 
virile character to be more angered than hurt by 
an insult or injury; the timid good form a most 
useless as well as a most despicable portion of the 



122 American Ideals 

community. Again, when a man is heard ob- 
jecting to taking part in poHtics because it is 
"low," he may be set down as either a fool or a 
coward : it would be quite as sensible for a militia- 
man to advance the same statement as an excuse 
for refusing to assist in quelling a riot. Many 
cultured men neglect their political duties simply 
because they are too delicate to have the element 
of "strike back" in their natures, and because 
they have an unmanly fear of being forced to 
stand up for their own rights when threatened 
with abuse or insult. Such are the conditions 
which give the machine men their chance; and 
they have been able to make the most possible 
out of this chance, — first, because of the perfec- 
tion to which they have brought their machinery ; 
and, second, because of the social character of 
their political organizations. 

Organization and Work of the Machines 

The machinery of any one of our political bodies 
is always rather complicated; and its politicians 
invariably endeavor to keep it so, because, their 
time being wholly given to it, they are able to 
become perfectly familiar with all its workings, 
while the average outsider becomes more and 
more helpless in proportion as the organization is 
less and less simple. Besides some others of 
minor importance, there are at present in New 



Machine Politics 123 

York three great political organizations, viz., those 
of the regular Republicans, of the County Democ- 
racy,' and of Tammany Hall, that of the last 
being perhaps the most perfect, viewed from a 
machine standpoint. Although with wide differ- 
ences in detail, all these bodies are organized upon 
much the same general plan ; and one description 
may be taken in the rough as applying to all. 
There is a large central committee, composed of 
numerous delegates from the different assembly 
districts, which decides upon the various ques- 
tions affecting the party as a whole in the county 
and city ; and then there are the various organiza- 
tions in the assembly districts themselves, which 
are the real sources of strength, and with which 
alone it is necessary to deal. There are different 
rules for the admission to the various district 
primaries and caucuses of the voters belonging to 
the respective parties; but in almost every case 
the real work is done and the real power held by a 
small knot of men, who in turn pay a greater or 
less degree of fealty to a single boss. 

The mere work to be done on election day and 
in preparing for it forms no slight task. There is 
an association in each assembly or election dis- 
trict, with its president, secretary, treasurer, ex- 
ecutive committee, etc. ; these call the primaries 

' Since succeeded every year or two by some other anti- 
Tammany Democratic organization or organizations. 



124 American Ideals 

and caucuses, arrange the lists of the delegates to 
the various nominating conventions, raise funds 
for campaign purposes, and hold themselves in 
communication with their central party organiza- 
tions. At the primaries in each assembly district 
a full set of delegates is chosen to nominate assem- 
blymen and aldermen, while others are chosen 
to go to the State, coimty, and congressional 
conventions. Before election day many thou- 
sands of complete sets of the party ticket are 
printed, folded, and put together, or, as it is called, 
"bunched." A single bimdle of these ballots is 
then sent to every voter in the district, while 
thousands are reserv^ed for distribution at the 
polls. In every election precinct — there are prob- 
ably twenty or thirty in each assembly district — 
a captain and from two to a dozen subordinates 
are appointed.^ These have charge of the actual 
giving out of the ballots at the polls. On election 
day they are at their places long before the hour 
set for voting; each party has a wooden booth, 
looking a good deal like a sentry-box, covered 
over with flaming posters containing the names of 
their nominees, and the "workers" cluster around 
these as centres. Every voter as he approaches 
is certain to be offered a set of tickets; usually 

I All this has been changed, vastly for the better, by the 
ballot-reform laws, under which the State distributes the 
printed ballots; and elections are now much more honest 
than formerly. 



Machine Politics 125 

these sets are "straight," that is, contain all the 
nominees of one party, but frequently crooked 
work will be done, and some one candidate will 
get his own ballots bunched with the rest of those 
of the opposite party. Each captain of a district 
is generally paid a certain sum of money, greater 
or less according to his ability as a politician or 
according to his power of serving the boss or ma- 
chine. Nominally this money goes in paying the 
subordinates and in what are vaguely termed 
"campaign expenses," but, as a matter of fact, it 
is in many instances simply pocketed by the re- 
cipient; indeed, very little of the large sums of 
money annually spent by candidates to bribe 
voters actually reaches the voters supposed to be 
bribed. The money thus furnished is procured 
either by subscriptions from rich outsiders or by 
assessments upon the candidates themselves ; for- 
merly much was also obtained from office-holders, 
but this is now prohibited by law. A great deal 
of money is also spent in advertising, placarding 
posters, paying for public meetings, and organiz- 
ing and uniforming members to take part in some 
huge torchlight procession — this last particular 
form of spectacular enjoyment being one pecul- 
iarly dear to the average American political mind. 
Candidates for very lucrative positions are often 
assessed really huge sums, in order to pay for the 
extravagant methods by which our canvasses are 



126 American Ideals 

conducted. Before a legislative committee of 
which I was a member, the Register of New York 
County blandly testified imder oath that he had 
forgotten whether his expenses during his canvass 
had been over or under fifty thousand dollars. It 
must be remembered that even now — and imtil 
recently the evil was very much greater— the re- 
wards paid to certain public officials are out of all 
proportion to the services rendered; and in such 
cases the active managing politicians feel that 
they have a right to exact the heaviest possible 
toll from the candidate to help pay the army of 
hungry heelers who do their bidding. Thus, be- 
fore the same committee the County Clerk testi- 
fied that his income was very nearly eighty 
thousand a year, but with refreshing frankness 
admitted that his own position was practically 
merely that of a figure-head, and that all the work 
was done by his deputy on a small fixed salary. 
As the County Clerk's term is three years, he 
should nominally have received nearly a quarter 
of a million dollars ; but as a matter of fact two 
thirds of the money probably went to the political 
organizations with which he was connected. The 
enormous emoluments of such officers are, of 
course, most effective in debauching politics. They 
bear no relation whatever to the trifling quantity 
of work done, and the chosen candidate readily 
recognizes what is the exact truth, — namely, that 



Machine Politics 127 

the benefit of his service is expected to enure to 
his party alHes and not to the citizens at large. 
Thus, one of the county officers who came before 
the above-mentioned committee testified with a 
naive openness which was appalling, in answer to 
what was believed to be a purely formal question 
as to whether he performed his public duties faith- 
fully, that he did so perform them whenever they 
did not conflict with his political duties !— mean- 
ing thereby, as he explained, attending to his 
local organizations, seeing politicians, fixing pri- 
maries, bailing out those of his friends (apparently 
by no means few in number) who got hauled up 
before a justice of the peace, etc. This man's 
statements were valuable because, being a truth- 
ful person and of such dense ignorance that he 
was at first wholly unaware his testimony was in 
any way remarkable, he really tried to tell things 
as they were ; and it had evidently never occurred 
to him that he was not expected by every one to 
do just as he had been doing, — that is, to draw a 
large salary for himself, to turn over a still larger 
fund to his party allies, and conscientiously to 
endeavor, as far as he could, by the free use of his 
time and influence, to satisfy the innumerable de- 
mands made upon him by the various small-fry 
politicians,^ 

^ As a consequence of our investigation, the committee, of 
which I was chairman, succeeded in securing the enactment 
of laws which aboUshcd these enormous salaries. 



128 American Ideals 

''Heelers" 

The "heelers," or "workers," who stand at the 
polls, and are paid in the way above described, 
form a large part of the rank and file composing 
each organization. There are, of course, scores of 
them in each assembly-district association, and, 
together with the almost equally numerous class 
of federal, State, or local paid office-holders (except 
in so far as these last have been cut out by the 
operations of the civil-service reform laws), they 
form the bulk of the men by whom the machine 
is run ; the bosses of great and small degree chiefly 
merely oversee the work and supervise the deeds 
of their henchmen. The organization of a party 
in our city is really much like that of an army. 
There is one great central boss, assisted by some 
trusted and able lieutenants; these communicate 
with the different district bosses, whom they alter- 
nately bully and assist. The district boss in turn 
has a number of half-subordinates, half-allies, 
under him ; these latter choose the captains of the 
election districts, etc., and come into contact with 
the common heelers. The more stupid and ig- 
norant the common heelers are, and the more im- 
pHcitly they obey orders, the greater becomes the 
effectiveness of the machine. An ideal machine 
has for its officers men of marked force, cunning 
and unscrupulous, and for its common soldiers 



Machine Politics 129 

men who may be either corrupt or moderately 
honest, but who must be of low intelligence. This 
is the reason why such a large proportion of the 
members of every political machine are recruited 
from the lower grades of the foreign population. 
These henchmen obey imhesitatingly the orders 
of their chiefs, both at the primary or caucus and 
on election day, receiving regular rewards for so 
doing, either in employment procured for them 
or else in money outright. Of course, it is by no 
means true that these men are all actuated merely 
by mercenary motives. The great majority en- 
tertain also a real feeling of allegiance towards the 
party to which they belong, or towards the politi- 
cal chief whose fortunes they follow; and many 
work entirely without pay and purely for what 
they beheve to be right. Indeed, an experienced 
politician always greatly prefers to have under 
him men whose hearts are in their work and upon 
whose unbribed devotion he can rely ; but, imfor- 
timately, he finds in most cases that their exer- 
tions have to be seconded by others which are 
prompted by motives far more mixed. 

All of these men, whether paid or not, make a 
business of political life and are thoroughly at 
home among the obscure intrigues that go to 
make up so much of it; and, consequently, they 
have quite as much the advantage when pitted 
against amateurs as regular soldiers have when 



I30 American Ideals 

matched against militiamen. But their numbers, 
though absolutely large, are, relatively to the 
entire community, so small that some other cause 
must be taken into consideration in order to 
accoimt for the commanding position occupied by 
the machine and the machine politicians in public 
life. This other determining cause is to be found 
in the fact that all these machine associations have 
a social as well as a political side, and that a large 
part of the political life of every leader or boss is 
also identical with his social life. 

The Social Side of Machine Politics 

The political associations of the various dis- 
tricts are not organized merely at the approach 
of election day; on the contrary, they exist 
throughout the year, and for the greater part of 
the time are to a great extent merely social clubs. 
To a large number of the men who belong to them 
they are the chief social rally ing-point. These 
men congregate in the association building in the 
evening to smoke, drink beer, and play cards, 
precisely as the wealthier men gather in the clubs 
whose purpose is avowedly social and not politi- 
cal — such as the Union, University, and Kmicker- 
bocker. Politics thus becomes a pleasure and 
relaxation as well as a serious pursuit. The dif- 
ferent members of the same club or association be- 
come closely allied with one another, and able to 



Machine Politics 131 

act together on occasions with unison and esprit 
de corps; and they will stand by one of their own 
number for reasons precisely homologous to those 
which make a member of one of the upper clubs 
support a fellow-member if the latter happens to 
run for office. "He is a gentleman, and shall 
have my vote," says the swell club man. "He's 
one of the boys, and I'm for him," replies the 
heeler from the district party association. In 
each case the feeling is social rather than political, 
but where the club man influences one vote the 
heeler controls ten. A rich merchant and a small 
tradesman alike find it merely a bore to attend 
the meetings of the local political club; it is to 
them an irksome duty which is shirked whenever 
possible. But to the small politicians and to the 
various workers and hangers-on, these meetings 
have a distinct social attraction, and the attend- 
ance is a matter of preference. They are in con- 
genial society and in the place where by choice 
they spend their evenings, and where they bring 
their friends and associates ; and naturally all the 
men so brought together gradually blend their 
social and political ties, and work with an effect- 
iveness impossible to the outside citizens whose 
social instincts interfere, instead of coinciding 
with their political duties. If an ordinary citizen 
wishes to have a game of cards or a talk with some 
of his companions, he must keep away from the 



132 American Ideals 

local headquarters of his party; whereas, under 
similar circumstances, the professional pohtician 
must go there. The man who is fond of his home 
naturally prefers to stay there in the evenings 
rather than go out among the noisy club fre- 
quenters, whose pleasure it is to see each other at 
least weekly, and who spend their evenings dis- 
cussing neither sport, business, nor scandal, as do 
other sections of the community, but the equally 
monotonous subject of ward politics. 

The strength of our political organizations arises 
from their development as social bodies; many 
of the hardest workers in their ranks are neither 
office-holders nor yet paid henchmen, but merely 
members who have graduahy learned to identify 
their fortunes with the party whose hall they 
have come to regard as the headquarters in which 
to spend the most agreeable of their leisure 
moments. Under the American system it is im- 
possible for a man to accomplish anything by him- 
self; he must associate himself with others and 
they must throw their weight together. This is 
just what the social functions of the political clubs 
enable their members to do. The great and rich 
society clubs are composed of men who are not 
apt to take much interest in politics anyhow, and 
never act as a body. The great effect produced 
by a social organization for poHtical purposes is 
shown by the career of the Union League Club; 



Machine Politics 133 

and equally striking proof can be seen by every 
man who attends a ward meeting. There is thus, 
however much to be regretted it may be, a con- 
stant tendency towards the concentration of politi- 
cal power in the hands of those men who by taste 
and education are fitted to enjoy the social side of 
the various political organizations. 

The Liquor-Seller in Politics 

It is this that gives the liquor-sellers their enor- 
mous influence in politics. Preparatory to the 
general election of 1884, there were held in the 
various districts of New York ten hundred and 
seven primaries and political conventions of all 
parties, and of these no less than six hundred and 
thirty-three took place in liquor-saloons, — a show- 
ing that leaves small ground for wonder at the 
low average grade of the nominees. The reason 
for such a condition of things is perfectly evident : 
it is because the liquor-saloons are places of social 
resort for the same men who turn the local politi- 
cal organizations into social clubs. Bar-tenders 
form, perhaps, the nearest approach to a leisure 
class that we have at present on this side of the 
water. Naturally they are on semi-intimate 
terms with all who frequent their houses. There 
is no place where more gossip is talked than in 
bar-rooms, and much of this gossip is about poli- 
tics, — that is, the politics of the ward, not of the 



134 American Ideals 

nation. The tariff and the silver question may be 
alluded to and civil-service reform may be inci- 
dentally damned, but the real interest comes in 
discussing the doings of the men with whom they 
are personally acquainted: why Billy So-and-so, 
the alderman, has quarrelled with his former chief 
supporter; whether "old man X" has really man- 
aged to fix the delegates to a given convention; 
the reason why one faction bolted at the last 
primary ; and if it is true that a great down-town 
boss who has an intimate friend of opposite poHti- 
cal faith running in an up-town district has forced 
the managers of his own party to put up a man 
of straw against him. The bar-keeper is a man 
of much local power, and is, of course, hail-fellow- 
well-met with his visitors, as he and they can be 
of mutual assistance to one another. Even if of 
different politics, their feelings towards each other 
are influenced purely by personal considerations; 
and, indeed, this is true of most of the smaller 
bosses as regards their dealings among themselves, 
for, as one of them once remarked to me with 
enigmatic truthfulness, "there are no politics in 
politics" of the lower sort — which, being inter- 
preted, means that a professional politician is 
much less apt to be swayed by the fact of a man's 
being a Democrat or a RepubUcan than he is by 
his being a personal friend or foe. The liquor- 
saloons thus become the social headquarters of 



Machine Politics 135 

the little knots or cliques of men who take most 
interest in local political affairs; and by an easy- 
transition they become the political headquarters 
when the time for preparing for the elections 
arrives; and, of course, the good-will of the 
owners of the places is thereby propitiated, — an 
important point with men striving to control 
every vote possible. 

The local political clubs also become to a certain 
extent mutual benefit associations. The men in 
them become pretty intimate with one another ; and 
in the event of one becoming ill, or from any other 
cause thrown out of employment, his fellow-mem- 
bers will very often combine to assist him through 
his troubles, and quite large sums are frequently 
raised for such a purpose. Of course, this forms 
an additional bond among the members, who be- 
come closely knit together by ties of companion- 
ship, self-interest, and mutual interdependence. 
Very many members of these associations come 
into them without any thought of advancing their 
own fortunes; they work very hard for their 
party, or, rather, for the local body bearing the 
party name, but they do it quite disinterestedly, 
and from a feeling akin to that which we often see 
make other men devote their time and money to 
advancing the interests of a yacht club or racing 
stable, although no immediate benefit can result 
therefrom to themselves. One such man I now 



136 American Ideals 

call to mind who is by no means well off, and is 
neither an office-seeker nor an office-holder, but 
who regularly every year spends about fifty dol- 
lars at election time for the success of the party, 
or rather the wing of the party, to which he be- 
longs. He has a personal pride in seeing his pet 
candidates rolling up large majorities. Men of 
this stamp also naturally feel most enthusiasm for, 
or animosity against, the minor candidates with 
whom they are themselves acquainted. The 
names at the head of the ticket do not, to their 
minds, stand out with much individuality; and 
while such names usually command the normal 
party support, yet very often there is an infinitely 
keener rivalry among the smaller politicians over 
candidates for local offices. I remember, in 1880, 
a very ardent Democratic ward club, many of the 
members of which in the heat of a contest for an 
assemblyman coolly swapped ofT quite a number 
of votes for President in consideration of votes 
given to their candidates for the State Legisla- 
ture; and, in 1885, in my own district, a local 
Republican club that had a member running for 
alderman, performed a precisely similar feat in 
relation to their party's candidate for governor. 
A Tammany State Senator openly announced in 
a public speech that it was of vastly more import- 
ance to Tammany to have one of her own men 
Mayor of New York than it was to have a Demo- 



Machine Politics 137 

cratic President of the United States. Very many 
of the leaders of the rival organizations, who lack 
the boldness to make such a frankly cynical 
avowal of what their party feeling really amounts 
to, yet in practice, both as regards mayor and as 
regards all other local offices which are politically 
or pecuniarily of importance, act exactly on the 
theory enunciated by the Tammany statesman; 
and, as a consequence, in every great election not 
only is it necessary to have the mass of the voters 
waked up to the importance of the principles that 
are at stake, but, unfortunately, it is also neces- 
sary to see that the powerful local leaders are 
convinced that it will be to their own interest to 
be faithful to the party ticket. Often there will 
be intense rivalry between two associations or 
two minor bosses ; and one may take up and the 
other oppose the cause of a candidate with an 
earnestness and hearty good-will arising by no 
means from any feeling for the man himself, but 
from the desire to score a triumph over the oppo- 
sition. It not unfrequently happens that a per- 
fectly good man, who would not knowingly suffer 
the least impropriety in the conduct of his can- 
vass, is supported in some one district by a little 
knot of politicians of shady character, who have 
nothing in common with him at all, but who wish 
to beat a rival body that is opposing him, and 
who do not for a moment hesitate to use every 



138 American Ideals 

device, from bribery down, to accomplish their 
ends. A curious incident of this sort came to my 
knowledge while happening to inquire how a cer- 
tain man became a Republican. It occurred a 
good many years ago, and, thanks to our election 
laws, it could not now be repeated in all its de- 
tails; but affairs similar in kind occur at every 
election. I may preface it by stating that the 
man referred to, whom we will call X, ended by 
pushing himself up in the world, thanks to his 
own industry and integrity, and is now a well-to- 
do private citizen and as good a fellow as any one 
would wish to see. But at the time spoken of he 
was a young laborer, of Irish birth, working for 
his livelihood on the docks and associating with 
his Irish and American fellows. The district 
where he lived was overwhelmingly Democratic, 
and the contests were generally merely factional. 
One small politician, a saloon-keeper named Larry, 
who had a great deal of influence, used to enlist 
on election day, by pay and other compensation, 
the services of the gang of young fellows to which 
X belonged. On one occasion he failed to reward 
them for their work, and in other ways treated 
them so shabbily as to make them very angry, 
more especially X, who was their leader. There 
was no way to pay Larry off until the next elec- 
tion ; but they determined to break his influence 
utterly then, and as the best method for doing this 



Machine Politics 139 

they decided to "vote as far away from him" as 
possible, or, in other words, to strain every nerve 
to secure the election of all the candidates most 
opposed to those whom Larry favored. After 
due consultation, it was thought that this could 
be most surely done by supporting the Republi- 
can ticket. Most of the other bodies of young 
laborers, or, indeed, of young roughs, made com- 
mon cause with X and his friends. Everything 
was kept very quiet imtil election day, neither 
Larry nor the few Republicans having an inkling 
of what was going on. It was a rough district, 
and usually the Republican booths were broken 
up and their ballot-distributers driven off early 
in the day; but on this occasion, to the speech- 
less astonishment of everybody, things went just 
the other way. The Republican ballots were dis- 
tributed most actively, the opposing workers were 
bribed, persuaded, or frightened away, all means 
fair and foul were tried, and finally there was 
almost a riot, — the outcome being that the Re- 
publicans actually obtained a majority in a dis- 
trict where they had never before polled ten per 
cent, of the total vote. Such a phenomenon 
attracted the attention of the big Republican 
leaders, who after some inquiry found it was due 
to X. To show their gratitude and to secure so 
useful an ally permanently (for this was before 
the days of civil-service reform), they procured 



I40 American Ideals 

him a lucrative place in the New York Post- 
office; and he, in turn, being a man of natural 
parts, at once seized the opportunity, set to work 
to correct the defects of his early education, and 
is now what I have described him to be. 

Boss Methods 

A politician who becomes an influential local 
leader or boss is, of course, always one with a 
genuine talent for intrigue and organization. He 
owes much of his power to the rewards he is able 
to dispense. Not only does he procure for his 
supporters positions in the service of the State or 
city, — as in the custom-house, sheriff's office, etc., 
— ^but he is also able to procure positions for many 
on horse railroads, the elevated roads, quarry 
works, etc. Great corporations are peculiarly 
subject to the attacks of demagogues, and they 
find it much to their interest to be on good terms 
with the leader of each district who controls the 
vote of the assemblyman and alderman; and 
therefore the former is pretty sure that a letter of 
recommendation from him on behalf of any appli- 
cant for work will receive most favorable con- 
sideration. The leader is also continually helping 
his henchmen out of difficulties, pecuniary and 
otherwise ; he lends them a dollar or two now and 
then, helps out, when possible, such of their kins- 
men as get into the clutches of the law, gets a 



Machine Politics 141 

hold over such of them as have done wrong and 
are afraid of being exposed, and learns to mix 
judicious bullying with the rendering of service. 

But, in addition to all this, the boss owes very 
much of his commanding influence to his social 
relations with various bodies of his constituents; 
and it is his work as well as his pleasure to keep 
up these relations. No debutante during her first 
winter in society has a more exacting round of 
social duties to perform than has a prominent 
ward politician. In every ward there are numer- 
ous organizations, primarily social in character, 
but capable of being turned to good account polit- 
ically. The Amalgamated Hack-drivers' Union, 
the Hibernian Republican Club, the West Side 
Young Democrats, the Jefferson C. Mullin Picnic 
Association, — there are twenty such bodies as 
these in every district, and with, at any rate, the 
master spirits in each and all it is necessary for 
the boss to keep on terms of intimate and, in- 
deed, rather boisterous friendship. When the 
Jefferson C. Mullin society goes on a picnic, the 
average citizen scrupulously avoids its neighbor- 
hood; but the boss goes, perhaps with his wife, 
and, moreover, enjoys himself heartily, and is 
hail-fellow-well-met with the rest of the pic- 
nickers, who, by the way, may be by no means 
bad fellows ; and when election day comes round, 
the latter, in return, no matter to what party they 



142 American Ideals 

may nominally belong, enthusiastically support 
their friend and guest on social, not pohtical, 
grounds. The boss knows every man in his dis- 
trict who can control any number of votes: an 
influential saloon-keeper, the owner of a large 
livery stable, the leader among a set of horse-car 
drivers, a foreman in a machine-shop who has a 
taste for poUtics, — with all alike he keeps up con- 
stant and friendly relations. Of course, this fact 
does not of itself make the boss a bad man ; there 
are several such I could point out who are ten 
times over better fellows than are the mild-man- 
nered scholars of timorous virtue who criticise 
them. But, on the whole, the qualities tending 
to make a man a successful local political leader 
tmder our present conditions are not apt to be 
qualities that make him serve the public hon- 
estly or disinterestedly; and in the lower wards, 
where there is a large vicious population, the con- 
dition of politics is often fairly appalling, and the 
boss of the dominant party is generally a man of 
grossly immoral public and private character, as 
any one can satisfy himself by examining the tes- 
timony taken by the last two or three legislative 
committees that have investigated the affairs of 
New York City. In some of these wards many of 
the social organizations with which the leaders 
are obliged to keep on good terms are composed 
of criminals, or of the relatives and associates 



Machine Politics 143 

of criminals. The testimony mentioned above 
showed some strange things I will take at ran- 
dom a few instances that occur to me at the mo- 
ment. There was one case of an assemblyman 
who served several terms in the Legislature, while 
his private business was to carry on corrupt ne- 
gotiations between the Excise Commissioners and 
owners of low haunts who wished licenses. The 
president of a powerful semi-political association 
was by profession a burglar, the man who received 
the goods he stole was an alderman. Another 
alderman was elected while his hair was still short 
from a term in State Prison. A school trustee 
had been convicted of embezzlement and was the 
associate of criminals. A prominent official in the 
Police Department was interested in disreputable 
houses and gambling saloons, and was backed 
politically by their proprietors. 

Beating the Machine 

In the better wards the difficulty comes in 
drilling a little sense and energy into decent people : 
they either do not care to combine or else refuse 
to learn how. In one district we did at one time 
and for a considerable period get control of affairs 
and elect a set of almost ideal delegates and can- 
didates to the various nominating and legisla- 
tive bodies, and in the end took an absolutely 



144 American Ideals 

commanding although temporary position in State 
and even in national politics. 

This was done by the efforts of some twenty or 
thirty young fellows who devoted a large part of 
their time to thoroughly organizing and getting 
out the respectable vote. The moving spirits were 
all active, energetic men, with common sense, 
whose motives were perfectly disinterested. Some 
went in from principle; others, doubtless, from 
good-fellowship or sheer love of the excitement 
always attendant upon a political struggle. Our 
success was due to our absolute freedom from 
caste spirit. Among our chief workers were a 
Columbia College professor, a crack oarsman from 
the same institution, an Irish quarryman, a master 
carpenter, a rich young merchant, the owner of a 
small cigar store, the editor of a little German 
newspaper, and a couple of employees from the 
post-office and custom-house, who worked di- 
rectly against their own seeming interests. One 
of our important committees was composed of a 
prominent member of a Jewish synagogue, of the 
son of a noted Presbyterian clergyman, and of a 
young Catholic lawyer. We won some quite re- 
markable triumphs, for the first time in New York 
politics carrying primaries against the machine, 
and as the result of our most successful struggle 
completely revolutionizing the State Convention 
held to send delegates to the National Repub- 



Machine Politics 145 

lican Convention of 1884, and returning to that 
body, for the first and only time it was ever done 
a solid delegation of Independent Republicans. 
This was done, however, by sheer hard work on 
the part of a score or so of men; the mass of 
our good citizens, even after the victories which 
they had assisted in winning, understood nothing 
of how they were won. Many of them actually 
objected to organizing, apparently having a con- 
fused idea that we could always win by what one 
of their number called a "spontaneous uprising," 
to which a quiet young fellow in our camp grimly 
responded that he had done a good deal of politi- 
cal work in his day, but that he never in his life 
had worked so hard and so long as he did to get up 
the "spontaneous" movement in which we were 
then engaged. 

Conclusions 

In conclusion, it may be accepted as a fact, 
however unpleasant, that if steady work and much 
attention to detail are required, ordinary citizens, 
to whom participation in politics is merely a dis- 
agreeable duty, will always be beaten by the or- 
ganized army of politicians to whom it is both 
duty, business, and pleasure, and who are knit 
together and to outsiders by their social relations. 
On the other hand, average citizens do take a 
spasmodic interest in public affairs ; and we should 



VOL. I.— lO. 



146 American Ideals 

therefore so shape our governmental system that 
the action required by the voters should be as 
simple and direct as possible, and should not need 
to be taken any more often than is necessary. 
Governmental power should be concentrated in 
the hands of a very few men, who would be so 
conspicuous that no citizen could help knowing 
all about them; and the elections should not 
come too frequently. Not one decent voter in 
ten will take the trouble annually to inform him- 
self as to the character of the host of petty candi- 
dates to be balloted for, but he will be sure to 
know all about the mayor, comptroller, etc. It is 
not to his credit that we can only rely, and that 
without much certainty, upon his taking a spas- 
modic interest in the government that affects his 
own well-being ; but such is the case, and accord- 
ingly we ought, as far as possible, to have a system 
requiring on his part intermittent and not sus- 
tained action. 



CHAPTER VII 

SIX YEARS OF CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM ^ 

NO question of internal administration is so 
important to the United States as the 
question of civil-service reform, because 
the spoils system, which can only be supplanted 
through the agencies which have foimd expression 
in the act creating the Civil-service Commission, 
has been for seventy years the most potent of all 
the forces tending to bring about the degradation 
of our politics. No republic can permanently en- 
dure when its politics are corrupt and base; and 
the spoils system, the application in political life 
of the degrading doctrine that to the victor belong 
the spoils, produces corruption and degradation. 
The man who is in politics for the offices might 
just as well be in politics for the money he can 
get for his vote, so far as the general good is con- 
cerned. When the then Vice-President of the 
United States, Mr. Hendricks, said that he "wished 
to take the boys in out of the cold to warm their 
toes," thereby meaning that he wished to dis- 
tribute offices among the more active heelers, to 
the rapturous enthusiasm of the latter, he uttered 

^ Scribner's Magazine, August, 1895. 
147 



148 American Ideals 

a sentiment which was morally on the same plane 
with the wish to give "the boys" five dollars 
apiece all around for their votes, and fifty dollars 
apiece when they showed themselves sufficiently 
active in bullying, bribing, and cajoling other 
voters. Such a sentiment should bar any man 
from public life, and will bar him whenever the 
people grow to realize that the worst enemies of 
the Republic are the demagogue and the corrup- 
tionist. The spoils-monger and spoils-seeker in- 
variably breed the bribe-taker and bribe-giver, 
the embezzler of public fimds, and the corrupter 
of voters. Civil-service reform is not merely a 
movement to better the public service. It 
achieves this end, too ; but its main purpose is to 
raise the tone of public life, and it is in this direc- 
tion that its effects have been of incalculable good 
to the whole community. 

For six years, from May, 1889, to May, 1895, I 
was a member of the National Civil-service Com- 
mission, and it seems to me to be of interest to 
show exactly what has been done to advance the 
law and what to hinder its advancement during 
these six years, and who have been the more 
prominent among its friends and foes. I wish to 
tell "the adventures of Philip on his way through 
the world," and show who robbed him, who helped 
him, and who passed him by. It would take too 
long to give the names of all our friends, and it is 



Six Years of Civil-Service Reform 149 

not worth while to more than allude to most of 
our foes and to most of those who were indifferent 
to us ; but a few of the names should be preserved 
and some record made of the fights that have 
been fought and won and of the way in which, 
by fits and starts, and with more than one set- 
back, the general advance has been made. 

Of the Commission itself, little need be said. 
When I took office the only Commissioner was 
Mr. Charles Lyman of Connecticut, who resigned 
when I did. Honorable Hugh S. Thompson, ex- 
Governor of South Carolina, was made Commis- 
sioner at the same time that I was, and after serv- 
ing for three years resigned. He was succeeded 
by Mr. George D. Johnston of Louisiana, who was 
removed by the President in November, 1893, 
being replaced by Mr. John R. Proctor, the former 
State Geologist of Kentucky, who is still serving. 
The Commission has never varied a hand's 
breadth from its course throughout this time ; and 
Messrs. Thompson, Proctor, Lyman, and myself 
were always a unit in all important questions 
of policy and principle. Our aim was always to 
procure the extension of the classified service as 
rapidly as possible, and to see that the law was 
administered thoroughly and fairly. The Com- 
mission does not have the power that it should, 
and in many instances there have been violations 
or evasions of the law in particular bureaus or de- 



150 American Ideals 

partments which the Commission was not able to 
prevent. In every case, however, we made a 
resolute fight, and gave the widest publicity 
to the wrong-doing. Often, even where we have 
been unable to win the actual fight in which we 
were engaged, the fact of our having made it, 
and the further fact that we were ready to repeat 
it on provocation, has put a complete stop to the 
repetition of the offence. As a consequence, 
while there have been plenty of violations and 
evasions of the law, yet their proportion was 
really very small, taking into account the extent 
of the service. In the aggregate it is doubtful if 
one per cent, of all the employees have been dis- 
missed for political reasons. In other words, 
where under the spoils system a hundred men 
would have been turned out, under the Civil-ser- 
vice Law, as administered under our supervision, 
ninety-nine men were kept in. 

In the administration of the law very much de- 
pends upon the Commission. Good heads of 
departments and bureaus will administer it well 
anyhow ; but not only the bad men, but also the 
large class of men who are weak rather than bad, 
are sure to administer the law poorly unless kept 
well up to the mark. The public should exercise 
a most careful scrutiny over the appointment and 
over the acts of Civil-service Commissioners, for 
there is no office the effectiveness of which de- 



Six Years of Civil-Service Reform 151 

pends so much upon the way in which the man 
himself chooses to construe his duties. A Com- 
missioner can keep within the letter of the law 
and do his routine work and yet accomplish ab- 
solutely nothing in the way of securing the ob- 
servance of the law. The Commission, to do 
useful work, must be fearless and vigilant. It 
must actively interfere whenever wrong is done, 
and must take all the steps that can be taken to 
secure the punishment of the wrong-doer and to 
protect the employee threatened with molestation. 
This course was consistently followed by the 
Commission throughout my connection with it. 
I was myself a Republican from the North. 
Messrs. Thompson and Proctor were from the 
South, and were both Democrats who had served 
in the Confederate armies ; and it would be im- 
possible for any one to desire as associates two 
public men with higher ideals of duty, or more 
resolute in their adherence to those ideals. It is 
imnecessary to say that in all our dealings there 
was no single instance wherein the politics of any 
person or the political significance of any action 
was so much as taken into account in any case 
that arose. The force of the Commission itself 
was all chosen through the competitive examina- 
tions, and included men of every party and from 
every section of the countiy ; and I do not believe 
that in any pubHc or private office of the size it 



152 American Ideals 

would be possible to find a more honest, efficient, 
and coherent body of workers. 

From the beginning of the present system each 
President of the United States has been its friend, 
but no President has been a radical civil-serv- 
ice reformer. Presidents Arthur, Harrison, and 
Cleveland have all desired to see the service ex- 
tended and to see the law well administered. No 
one of them has felt willing or able to do all that 
the reformers asked, or to pay much heed to their 
wishes save as regards that portion of the service 
to which the law actually applied. Each has been 
a sincere party man, who has felt strongly on such 
questions as those of the tariff, of finance, and of 
our foreign policy, and each has been obliged to 
conform more or less closely to the wishes of his 
party associates and fellow party leaders ; and, of 
course, these party leaders, and the party poli- 
ticians generally, wished the offices to be distrib- 
uted as they had been ever since Andrew Jackson 
became President. In consequence, the offices 
outside the protection of the law have still been 
treated, under every administration, as patronage, 
to be disposed of in the interest of the dominant 
party. An occasional exception was made here 
and there. The postmaster at New York, a Re- 
publican, was retained by President Cleveland in 
his first administration, and the postmaster of 
Charleston, a Democrat, was retained by President 



Six Years of Civil-Service Reform 153 

Harrison; but, with altogether insignificant ex- 
ceptions, the great bulk of the non-classified 
places have been changed for political reasons by 
each administration, the office-holders politically 
opposed to the administration being supplanted 
or succeeded by political adherents of the admin- 
istration. 

Where the change has been complete it does 
not matter much whether it was made rapidly or 
slowly. Thus, the fourth-class postmasterships 
were looted more rapidly under the administra- 
tion of President Harrison than imder that of 
President Cleveland, and the consular service 
more rapidly under President Cleveland than 
under President Harrison; but the final result 
was the same in both cases. Indeed, I think that 
the brutality which accompanied the greater speed 
was in some ways of service to the country, for 
it directed attention to the iniquity and folly of 
the system, and emphasized, in the minds of 
decent citizens, the fact that appointments and 
removals for political reasons in places where the 
duties are wholly non-political cannot be defended 
by any man who looks at public affairs from the 
proper standpoint. 

The advance has been made purely on two 
lines, that is, by better enforcement of the law, 
and by inclusion imder the law, or under some 
system similar in its operations, of a portion of 



154 American Ideals 

the service previously administered in accordance 
with the spoils theory. Under President Arthur 
the first classification was made, which included 
fourteen thousand places. Under President Cleve- 
land, during his first term, the limits of the classified 
service were extended by the inclusion of seven 
thousand additional places. During President Har- 
rison's term the limit was extended by the inclu- 
sion of about eight thousand places ; and hitherto 
during President Cleveland's second term, by the 
inclusion of some six thousand places ; in addition 
to which the natural growth of the service has 
been such that the total number of oflices now 
classified is over forty thousand. Moreover, the 
Secretary of the Navy under President Harrison, 
introduced into the navy yards a system of regis- 
tration of laborers, which secures the end desired 
by the Commission; and Secretary Herbert has 
continued this system. It only rests, however, 
upon the will of the Secretary of the Navy; and 
as we cannot expect always to have secretaries as 
clear-sighted as Messrs. Tracy and Herbert, it is 
most desirable that this branch of the service 
should be put directly under the control of the 
Commission. 

The Cabinet officers, though often not civil-ser- 
vice reformers to start with, usually become such 
before their terms of office expire. This was true, 
without exception, of all the Cabinet officers with 



Six Years of Civil-Service Reform 155 

whom I was personally brought into contact while 
on the Commission. Moreover, from their posi- 
tion and their sense of responsibihty they are cer- 
tain to refrain from violating the law themselves 
and to try to secure at least a formal compliance 
with its demands on the part of their subordinates. 
In most cases it is necessary, however, to goad 
them continually to see that they do not allow 
their subordinates to evade the law; and it is 
very difficult to get either the President or the 
head of a department to punish these subordi- 
nates when they have evaded it. There is not 
much open violation of the law, because such vio- 
lation can be reached through the courts ; but in 
the small offices and small bureaus there is often 
a chance for an unscrupulous head of the office or 
bureau to persecute his subordinates who are 
politically opposed to him into resigning, or to 
trump up charges against them on which they can 
be dismissed. If this is done in a sufficient num- 
ber of cases, men of the opposite political party 
think that it is useless to enter the examinations ; 
and by staying out they leave the way clear for 
the offender to get precisely the men he wishes for 
the eligible registers. Cases Hke this continually 
occur, and the Commission has to be vigilant in 
detecting and exposing them, and in demanding 
their punishment by the head of the office. The 
offender always, of course, insists that he has been 



15^ American Ideals 

misunderstood, and in most cases he can prepare 
quite a specious defence. As he is of the same 
political faith as the head of the department, and 
as he is certain to be backed by influential poli- 
ticians, the head of the department is usually 
loath to act against him, and, if possible, will let 
him off with, at most, a warning not to repeat the 
ofience. In some departments this kiad of eva- 
sion has never been tolerated; and where the 
Commission has the force tmder its eye, as in the 
departments at Washington, the chance of in- 
justice is minimized. Nevertheless, there have 
been considerable abuses of this kind, notably in 
the custom-houses and post-offices, throughout the 
time I have been at Washington. So far as the 
Post-office Department was concerned the abuses 
were more flagrant imder President Harrison's 
Postmaster-General, Mr. Wanamaker ; but in the 
Treasury Department they were more flagrant 
imder President Cleveland's Secretary of the 
Treasury, Mr. Carlisle. 

Congress has control of the appropriations for 
the Commission, and as it cannot do its work with- 
out an ample appropriation the action of Congress 
is vital to its welfare. Many, even of the friends 
of the system in the coimtry at large, are aston- 
ishingly ignorant of who the men are who have 
battled most effectively for the law and for good 
government in either the Senate or the Lower 



Six Years of Civil-Service Reform 157 

House. It is not only necessary that a man shall 
be good and possess the desire to do decent things, 
but it is also necessary that he shall be courageous, 
practical, and efficient, if his work is to amount to 
anything. There is a good deal of rough-and- 
tumble fighting in Congress, as there is in all our 
political life, and a man is entirely out of place in 
it if he does not possess the virile qualities, and if 
he fails to show himself ready and able to hit 
back when assailed. ]\Ioreover, he must be alert, 
vigorous, and intelligent if he is going to make his 
work count. The friends of the Civil-service Law, 
like the friends of all other laws, would be in a 
bad way if they had to rely solely upon the back- 
ing of the timid good. During the last six years 
there have been, as there always are, a number of 
men in the House who believe in the Civil-service 
Law, and who vote for it if they understand the 
question and are present when it comes up, but 
who practically count for very little one way or 
the other, because they are timid or flighty, or are 
lacking in capacity for leadership or ability to see 
a point and to put it strongly before their asso- 
ciates. 

There is need of further legislation to perfect 
and extend the law and the system; but Con- 
gress has never been willing seriously to consider 
a proposition looking to this extension. Bills to 
provide for the appointment of fourth-class post- 



158 American Ideals 

masters have been introduced by Senator Lodge 
and others, but have never come to anything. 
Indeed, but once has a measure of this kind been 
reported from committee and fought for in either 
House. This was in the last session of the Fifty- 
third Congress, when Senators Morgan and Lodge 
introduced bills to reform the consular service. 
They were referred to Senator Morgan's Committee 
on Foreign Affairs and were favorably reported. 
Senator Lodge made a vigorous fight for them in 
the Senate, but he received little support, and was 
defeated, Senator Gorman leading the opposition. 
On the other hand, efforts to repeal the law, or 
to destroy it by new legislation, have uniformly 
been failures and have rarely gone beyond com- 
mittee. Occasionally, in an appropriation bill or 
some other measure, an amendment will be slipped 
through, adding forty or fifty employees to the 
classified service, or providing that the law shall 
not apply to them; but nothing important has 
ever been done in this way. But once has there 
been a resolute attack made on the law by legisla- 
tion. This was in the Fifty-third Congress, when 
Mr. Bynum of Indiana, introduced in the House, 
and Mr. Vilas of Wisconsin, pushed in the Sen- 
ate, a bill to reinstate the Democratic railway 
mail clerks, turned out before the classification of 
the railway mail service in the early days of Mr. 
Harrison's administration. 



Six Years of Civil-Service Reform 159 

The classification of the railway mail service 
was ordered by President Cleveland less than two 
months before the expiration of his first term of 
office as President. It was impossible for the 
Commission to prepare and hold the necessary 
examinations and establish ehgible registers prior 
to May I, 1889. President Harrison had been in- 
augurated on March 4th, and Postmaster-General 
Wanamaker permitted the spoilsmen to take ad- 
vantage of the necessary delay and turn out half 
of the employees who were Democrats and replace 
them by Repubhcans. This was an outrageous 
act, deserving the severe condemnation it re- 
ceived; but it was perfectly legal. During the 
four years of Mr. Cleveland's first term a clean 
sweep was made of the railway mail service ; the 
employees who were almost all Republicans were 
turned out and Democrats were put in their 
places. The result was utterly to demoralize the 
efficiency of the service. It had begun to recover 
from this when the change of administration took 
place in 1889. The time was too short to allow 
of a clean sweep, but the Republicans did all they 
could in two months and turned out half of the 
Democrats. The law then went into effect, and 
since that time there have been no more removals 
for partisan purposes in that service. It has now 
recovered from the demoralization into which it 
was thrown by the two political revolutions, and 



i6o American Ideals 

has reached a higher standard of efficiency tlian 
ever before. What was done by the Republicans 
in this service was repeated, on a less scale, by the 
Democrats four years later in reference to the 
classification of the small free-delivery post- 
offices. This classification was ordered by Presi- 
dent Harrison two months before his term of 
office expired; but in many of the offices it was 
impossible to hold examinations and prepare elig- 
ible registers until after the inauguration of Presi- 
dent Cleveland, and in a number of cases the in- 
coming postmasters, who were appointed prior to 
the time when the law went into effect, took 
advantage of the delay to make clean sweeps of 
their offices. In one of these offices, where the 
men were changed in a body, the new appointees 
hired the men whom they replaced, at $35 a 
month apiece, to teach them their duties ; in itself 
a sufficient comment on the folly of the spoils 
system. 

Mr. Bynum's bill provided for the reinstatement 
of the Democrats who were turned out by the 
Republicans just before the classification of the 
railway mail service. Of course such a bill was 
a mere partisan measure. There was no more 
reason for reinstating the Democrats thus turned 
out than for reinstating the Republicans who had 
been previously turned out that these same Demo- 
crats might get in, or for reinstating the Repub- 



Six Years of Civil-Service Reform i6i 

licans in the free-delivery offices who had been 
turned out just before these offices were classified. 
If the bill had been enacted into law it would have 
been a most serious blow to the whole system, for 
it would have put a premium upon legislation of 
the kind; and after every change of parties we 
should have seen the passing of laws to reinstate 
masses of Republicans or Democrats, as the case 
might be. This would have meant a return to 
the old system under a new form of procedure. 
Nevertheless, Mr. Bynum's bill received the solid 
support of his party. Not a Democratic vote was 
cast against it in the House, none even of the 
Massachusetts Democrats being recorded against 
it. In the Senate it was pushed by Mr. Vilas. 
By a piece of rather sharp parliamentary pro- 
cedure he nearly got it through by unanimous 
consent. That it failed was owing entirely to the 
vigilance of Senator Lodge. Senator Vilas asked 
for the passage of the bill, on the ground that it 
was one of small importance, upon which his com- 
mittee were agreed. When it was read the words 
"classified civil service" caught Senator Lodge's 
ear, and he insisted upon an explanation. On 
finding out what the bill was he at once objected 
to its consideration. Under this objection it 
could not then be considered. If it could have 
been brought to a vote it would undoubtedly have 
passed; but it was late in the session, the calen- 

VOL. I. — II, 



1 62 American Ideals 

dars were crowded with bills, and it was impos- 
sible to get it up in its regular order. Another 
effort was made, and was again frustrated by- 
Senator Lodge, and the bill then died a natural 
death. 

In the final session of the Fifty-third Congress 
a little incident occurred which deserves to be 
related in full, not for its own importance, but 
because it affords an excellent example of the 
numerous cases which test the real efficiency of 
the friends of the reform in Congress. It empha- 
sizes the need of having, to watch over the interests 
of the law, a man who is willing to fight, who knows 
the time to fight, and who knows how to fight. 
The secretary of the Commission was, in the orig- 
inal law of 1883, allowed a salary of $1600 a year. 
As the Commission's force and work have grown, 
the salary in successive appropriation bills for the 
last ten years has been provided for at the rate of 
$2000 a year. Many of the clerks under the sec- 
retary now receive $1800, so that it would be, of 
course, an absurdity to reduce him in salary below 
his subordinates. Scores of other officials of the 
Government, including, for instance, the Presi- 
dent's private secretary, the First Assistant Post- 
master-General, the First Assistant Secretary of 
State, etc., have had their salaries increased in 
successive appropriation bills over the sum orig- 
inally provided, in precisely the same way that the 



Six Years of Civil-Service Reform 163 

salary of the secretary of the Commission was 
increased. The Fifty-third Congress was Demo- 
cratic, as was the President, Mr. Cleveland, and 
the secretary of the Commission was himself a 
Democrat, who had been appointed to the posi- 
tion by Mr. Cleveland during his first term as 
President. The rules of the House provide that 
there shall be no increase of salary beyond that 
provided in existing law in any appropriation bill. 
When the appropriation for the Civil-service Com- 
mission came up in the House, Mr. Breckinridge 
of Kentucky, made the point of order that to give 
$2000 to the secretary of the Commission was to 
increase his salary by $400 over that provided in 
the original law of 1883, and was therefore out of 
order. He also produced a list of twenty or thirty 
other officers, including the President's private 
secretary, the First Assistant Postmaster-General, 
etc., whose salaries were similarly increased. He 
withdrew his point of order as regards these per- 
sons, but adhered to it as regards the secretary of 
the Commission. The chairman of the Commit- 
tee of the Whole, Mr. O'Neill of Massachusetts, 
sustained the point of order; and not one person 
made any objection or made any fight, and the 
bill was put through the House with the secretary's 
salary reduced. 

Now, the point of order was probably ill taken 
anyhow. The existing law was and had been for 



1 64 American Ideals 

ten years that the salary was $2000, But, in any 
event, had there been a single Congressman alert 
to the situation and willing to make a fight, he 
could have stopped the whole movement by at once 
making a similiar point of order against the Presi- 
dent's private secretary, against the First Assis- 
tant Postmaster-General, the Assistant Secretary 
of State, and all the others involved. The House 
would, of course, have refused to cut down the 
salaries of all of these officials, and a resolute man, 
willing to insist that they should all go or none, 
could have saved the salary of the secretary of 
the Civil-service Commission. There were plenty 
of men who would have done this if it had been 
pointed out to them; but no one did so, and Mr. 
Breckinridge's point of order was sustained and 
the salary of the secretary reduced by $400. When 
it got over to the Senate, however, the civil-ser- 
vice reformers had allies who needed but little 
coaching. In the first place, the sub-committee 
of the Committee on Appropriations, composed of 
Messrs. Teller, Cockrell, and Allison, to which the 
Civil-service Commission section of the Appro- 
priation Bill was referred, restored the salary to 
$2000; but Senator Gorman succeeded in carry- 
ing, by a bare majority, the Appropriations Com- 
mittee against it, and it was reported to the full 
Senate still at $1600. The minute it got into the 
Senate, however. Senator Lodge had a fair chance 



Six Years of Civil-Service Reform 165 

at it, and it was known that he would receive 
ample support. All that he had to do was to show 
clearly the absolute folly of the provision thus put 
in by Mr. Breckinridge, and kept in by Mr. Gor- 
man, and to make it evident that he intended to 
fight it resolutely. The opposition collapsed at 
once; the salary was put back at $2000, and the 
bill became a law in that form. 

Whether bad legislation shall be choked and 
good legislation forwarded depends largely upon 
the composition of the committees on civil-ser- 
vice reform of the Senate and the Lower House. 
The make-up of these committees is consequently 
of great importance. They are charged with the 
duty of investigating complaints against the Com- 
mission, and it is of course very important that 
if ever the Commission becomes corrupt or in- 
efficient its shortcomings should be unsparingly 
exposed in Congress. On the other hand, it is 
equally important that the falsity of untruthful 
charges advanced against it should be made pub- 
lic. In the Fifty-first, Fifty-second, and Fifty- 
third Congresses a good deal of work was done 
by the Civil-service Committee of the House, and 
none at all by the corresponding committee of the 
Senate. The three chairmen of the House com- 
mittee were Mr. Lehlbach, Mr. Andrew, and Mr. 
De Forest. All three were able and conscientious 
men and staunch supporters of the law. The 



i66 American Ideals 

chairman in the Fifty-second Congress, Mr. John 
F. Andrew, was throughout his whole term of 
service one of the ablest, most fearless, and most 
effective champions of the cause of the reform in 
the House. Among the other members of the 
committee, in different Congresses, who stood 
up valiantly for the reform, were Mr. Hopkins 
of Illinois, Mr, Butterworth of Ohio, Mr. Boatner 
of Louisiana, and Mr. Dargan and Mr. Brawley of 
South Carolina. Occasionally there have been on 
the committee members who were hostile to the 
reform, such as Mr. Alderson of West Virginia; 
but these have not been men carrying weight in 
the House. The men of intelligence and ability 
who once familiarize themselves with the work- 
ings of the system, as they are bound to do if 
they are on the committee, are sure to become 
its supporters. In both the Fifty-first and the 
Fifty-second Congresses charges were made against 
the Commission, and investigations were held into 
its actions and into the workings of the law by the 
House committee. In each case, in its report the 
committee not only heartily applauded the con- 
duct of the Commission, but no less heartily ap- 
proved the workings of the law, and submitted 
bills to increase the power of the Commission and 
to render the law still more wide-reaching and 
drastic. These bills, imfortunately, were never 
acted on in the House. 



Six Years of Civil-Service Reform 167 

The main fight in each session comes on the 
Appropriation Bill. There is not the slightest 
danger that the law will be repealed, and there is 
not much danger that any President will suffer 
it to be so laxly administered as to deprive it of 
all value; though there is always need to keep a 
vigilant lookout for fear of such lax administra- 
tion. The danger-point is in the appropriations. 
The first Civil-service Commission, established in 
the days of President Grant, was starved out by 
Congress refusing to appropriate for it. A hostile 
Congress could repeat the same course now; and, 
as a matter of fact, in every Congress resolute 
efforts are made by the champions of foul govern- 
ment and dishonest politics to cut off the Com- 
mission's supplies. The bolder men, who come 
from districts where little is known of the law, 
and where there is no adequate expression of in- 
telligent and honest opinion on the subject, attack 
it openly. They are always joined by a number 
who make the attack covertly under some point 
of order, or because of a nominal desire for econ- 
omy. These are quite as dangerous as the others 
and deserve exposure. Every man interested in 
decent government should keep an eye on his Con- 
gressman and see how he votes on the question 
of appropriations for the Commission. 

The opposition to the reform is generally well 
led by skilled parliamentarians, and they fight with 



1 68 American Ideals 

the vindictiveness natural to men who see a 
chance of striking at the institution which has 
baffled their ferocious greed. As a rule, the rank 
and file are composed of politicians who could not 
rise in public life because of their attitude on any 
public question, and who derive most of their 
power from the skill with which they manipulate 
the patronage of their districts. These men have 
a gift at office-mongering, just as other men have 
a peculiar knack in picking pockets; and they 
are joined by all the honest dull men, who vote 
wrong out of pure ignorance, and by a very few 
sincere and intelligent, but wholly misguided 
people. Many of the spoils leaders are both effi- 
cient and fearless, and able to strike hard blows. 
In consequence, the leaders on the side of decency 
must themselves be men of ability and force or the 
cause will suffer. For our good fortune we have 
never yet lacked such leaders. 

The appropriation committees, both in the 
House and Senate, almost invariably show a 
friendly disposition toward the law. They are 
composed of men of prominence, who have a 
sense of the responsibilities of their positions and 
an earnest desire to do well for the country, and 
to make an honorable record for their party in 
matters of legislation. They are usually above 
resorting to the arts of low cunning or of sheer 
demagogy to which the foes of the reform system 



Six Years of Civil-Service Reform 169 

are inevitably driven, and in consequence they can 
be relied upon to give, if not what is needed, at 
least enough to prevent any retrogression. It is 
in the open House and in Committee of the Whole 
that the fight is waged. The most dangerous 
fight occurs in Committee of the Whole, for there 
the members do not vote by aye and no, and in 
consequence a mean politician who wishes ill to 
the law, but is afraid of his constituents, votes 
against it in committee, but does not dare to do 
so when the ayes and noes are called in the House. 
One result of this has been that more than once 
the whole appropriation has been stricken out in 
Committee of the Whole, and then voted back 
again by substantial majorities by the same men 
sitting in open House. 

In the debate on the appropriation the whole 
question of the workings of the law is usually dis- 
cussed, and those members who are opposed to 
it attack not only the law itself, but the Commis- 
sion which administers it. The occasion is, there- 
fore, invariably seized as an opportunity for a 
pitched battle between the friends and foes of the 
system, the former trying to secure such an in- 
crease of appropriation as will permit the Com- 
mission to extend its work, and the latter striving 
to abolish the law outright by refusing all appro- 
priations. In the Fifty-first and Fifty-second Con- 
gresses, Mr. Lodge of Massachusetts led the fight 



170 American Ideals 

for the reform in the Lower House. He was sup- 
ported by such party leaders as Messrs. Reed of 
Maine and McKinley of Ohio, among the Repub- 
Hcans; and Messrs. Wilson of West Virginia and 
Sayers of Texas among the Democrats. Among 
the other champions of the law on the floor of the 
House were Messrs. Hopkins and Butterworth, 
Mr. Greenhalge of Massachusetts, Mr. Henderson 
of Iowa, Messrs. Payne, Tracey, and Coombs of 
New York. I wish I had the space to chronicle 
the names of all and to give a complete Hst of 
those who voted for the law. Among the chief 
opponents of it were Messrs. Spinola of New York, 
Enloe of Tennessee, Stockdale of Mississippi, 
Grosvenor of Ohio, and Bowers of California. 
The task of the defenders of the law was, in one 
way easy, for they had no arguments to meet, the 
speeches of their adversaries being invariably 
divisible into mere declamation and direct mis- 
statement of facts. In the Senate, Senators Hoar 
of Massachusetts, Allison of Iowa, Hawley of Con- 
necticut, Wolcott of Colorado, Perkins of Califor- 
nia, Cockrell of Missouri, and Butler of South 
Carolina always supported the Commission against 
unjust attack. Senator Gorman was naturally the 
chief leader of the assaults upon the Commission. 
Senators Harris, Plumb, Stewart, and Ingalls were 
among his allies. 

In each session the net result of the fight was 



Six Years of Civil-Service Reform 171 

an increase in the appropriation for the Commis- 
sion. The most important increase was that 
obtained in the first session of the Fifty-third Con- 
gress. On this occasion Mr. Lodge was no longer 
in the House, having been elected to the Senate. 
The work of the Commission had grown so that 
it was impossible to perform it without a great 
increase of force ; and it would have been impos- 
sible to have put into effect the extensions of 
the classified service had this increase not been 
allowed. In the House the Committee on Ap- 
propriations, of which Mr. Sayers was chairman, 
allowed the increase, but it was stricken out in 
the House itself after an acrimonious debate, in 
which the cause of the law was sustained by 
Messrs. Henderson and Hopkins, Mr. McCall of 
Massachusetts, Mr. Coombs, Mr. Crain of Texas, 
Mr. Storer of Ohio, and many others; while the 
spoils-mongers were led by Messrs. Stockdale and 
Williams of Mississippi, Pendelton of West Vir- 
ginia, Fithian of Illinois, and others less important. 
When the bill went over to the Senate, however, 
Mr. Lodge, well supported by Messrs. Allison, 
Cockrell, Wolcott, and Teller, had the provision 
for the increase of appropriation for the Commis- 
sion restored and increased, thereby adding by 
one half to the efficiency of the Commission's 
work. Had it not been for this the Commission 
would have been quite unable to have undertaken 



172 American Ideals 

the extensions recently ordered by President 
Cleveland. 

It is noteworthy that the men who have done 
most effective work for the law in Washington 
in the departments, and more especially in the 
House and Senate, are men of spotless character, 
who show by their whole course in public life that 
they are not only able and resolute, but also de- 
voted to a high ideal. Much of what they have 
done has received little comment in public, be- 
cause much of the work in committee and some of 
the work in the House, such as making or com- 
bating points of order, and pointing out the danger 
or merit of certain bills, is not of a kind readily 
tmderstood or appreciated by an outsider ; yet no 
men have deserved better of the country, for 
there is in American public life no one other 
cause so fruitful of harm to the body-politic as 
the spoils system, and the legislators and admin- 
istrative officers who have done the best work 
toward its destruction merit a peculiar meed of 
praise from all well-wishers of the Republic. 

I have spoken above of the good that would 
come from a thorough and intelligent knowledge 
as to who were the friends and who were the foes 
of the law in Washington. Departmental officers, 
the heads of bureaus, and, above all, the Commis- 
sioners themselves, should be carefully watched 
by all friends of the reform. They should be sup- 



Six Years of Civil-Service Reform i -jz 

ported when they do well and condemned when 
they do ill; and attention should be called not 
only to what they do, but to what they fail to do. 
To an even greater extent, of course, this applies 
to the President. As regards the Senators and 
Congressmen, also, there is urgent need of careful 
supervision by the friends of the law. We need 
criticism by those who are unable to do their part 
in action ; but the criticism, to be useful, must be 
both honest and intelHgent, and the critics must 
remember that the system has its staunch friends 
and bitter foes among both party men and men 
of no party — among Republicans, Democrats, 
and Independents. Each Congressman should be 
made to feel that it is his duty to support the law, 
and that he will be held to accoimt if he fails to 
support it. Especially is it necessary to concen- 
trate effort in working for each step of reform. In 
legislative matters, for instance, there is need of 
increase of appropriations for the Commission, and 
there is a chance of putting through the bill to 
reform the consular service. This has received 
substantial backing in the Senate and has the 
support of the majority of the Foreign Affairs 
Committee. Instead of wasting effort by a dif- 
fuse support of eight or ten bills, it would be 
well to bend every energy to securing the pass- 
age of the Consular Bill ; and to do this it is neces- 
sary to arouse not only the Civil-service Reform 



174 American Ideals 

Associations, but the Boards of Trade throughout 
the country, and to make the Congressmen and 
Senators feel individually the pressure from those 
of their constituents who are resolved no longer 
to tolerate the peculiarly gross manifestation of 
the spoils system which now obtains in the con- 
sular service, with its attendant discredit to the 
national honor abroad. 

People sometimes grow a little down-hearted 
about the reform. When they feel in this mood it 
would be well for them to reflect on what has 
actually been gained in the past six years. By 
the inclusion of the railway mail service, the 
smaller free-delivery offices, the Indian School 
service, the Internal Revenue service, and other 
less important branches, the extent of the public 
service which is under the protection of the law 
has been more than doubled, and there are now 
nearly fifty thousand employees of the Federal 
Government who have been withdrawn from the 
degrading influences that rule under the spoils 
system. This of itself is a great success and a 
great advance, though, of course, it ought only to 
spur us on to renewed effort. In the fall of 1894, 
the people of the State of New York, by a popular 
vote, put into their constitution a provision pro- 
viding for a merit system in the affairs of the 
State and its municipalities; and the following 
spring the great city of Chicago voted, by an over- 



Six Years of Civil-Service Reform 175 

whelming majority, in favor of applying in its 
municipal affairs the advanced and radical Civil- 
service Reform Law, which had already passed 
the Illinois Legislature. Undoubtedly, after every 
success there comes a moment of reaction. The 
friends of the reform grow temporarily luke- 
warm, or, because it fails to secure everything 
they hoped, they neglect to lay proper stress upon 
all that it does secure. Yet, in spite of all rebuffs, 
in spite of all disappointments and oppositions, 
the growth of the principle of civil -service reform 
has been continually more rapid, and every year 
has taken us measurably nearer that ideal of pure 
and decent government which is dear to the heart 
of every honest American citizen. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ADMINISTERING THE NEW YORK POLICE FORCE ^ 

IN New York, in the fall of 1894, Tammany Hall 
was overthrown by a coalition composed 
partly of the regular Republicans, partly of 
anti-Tammany Democrats, and partly of Inde- 
pendents, Under the latter head must be in- 
cluded a great many men who, in national politics, 
habitually act with one or the other of the two 
great parties, but who feel that in municipal poli- 
tics good citizens should act independently. The 
tidal wave, which was rimning high against the 
Democratic party, was undoubtedly very influen- 
tial in bringing about the anti-Tammany victory ; 
but the chief factor in producing the result was the 
wide-spread anger and disgust felt by decent citi- 
zens at the corruption which, under the sway of 
Tammany, had honey-combed every department 
of the city government, but especially the police 
force, A few well-meaning people have at times 
tried to show that this corruption was not really 
so very great. In reality it would be difficult 
to overestimate the utter rottenness of many 
branches of the city administration. There were 

^ Atlantic Monthly, September, 1897. 
176 



Administering New York Police 177 

a few honorable and high-minded Tammany offi- 
cials, and there were a few bureaus which were 
administered with more or less efficiency, although 
dishonestly. But the corruption had become so 
wide-spread as seriously to impair the work of 
administration, and to bring us back within meas- 
urable distance of the days of Tweed. 

The chief centre of corruption was the police 
department. No man not intimately acquainted 
with both the lower and humbler sides of New 
York life — for there is a wide distinction between 
the two — can realize how far this corruption ex- 
tended. Except in rare instances, where promi- 
nent politicians made demands which could not 
be refused, both promotions and appointments 
towards the close of Tammany rule were made 
almost solely for money, and the prices were 
discussed with cynical frankness. There was a 
well-recognized tariff of charges, ranging from 
two or three hundred dollars for appointment as 
a patrolman, to twelve or fifteen thousand dol- 
lars for promotion to the position of captain. 
The money was reimbursed to those who paid 
it by an elaborate system of blackmail. This 
was chiefly carried on at the expense of gamblers, 
liquor-sellers, and keepers of disorderly houses; 
but every form of vice and crime contributed 
more or less, and a great many respectable people 
who were ignorant or timid were blackmailed 



178 American Ideals 

under pretence of forbidding or allowing them to 
violate obscure ordinances and the like. From 
top to bottom the New York police force was 
utterly demoralized by the gangrene of such a 
system, where venality and blackmail went hand 
in hand with the basest forms of low ward 
politics, and where the policeman, the ward politi- 
cian, the liquor-seller, and the criminal alternately 
preyed on one another and helped one another to 
prey on the general public. 

In May, 1895, 1 was made president of the newly 
appointed police board, whose duty it was to cut 
out the chief source of civic corruption in New 
York by cleansing the police department. The 
police board consisted of four members. All 
four of the new men were appointed by Mayor 
Strong, the reform mayor, who had taken office 
in January. 

With me, was associated, as treasurer of the 
board, Mr, Avery D. Andrews. He was a Demo- 
crat and I a Republican, and there were questions 
of national politics on which we disagreed widely ; 
but such questions could not enter into the ad- 
ministration of the New York police, if that ad- 
ministration was to be both honest and efficient ; 
and as a matter of fact, during my two years' 
service, Mr. Andrews and I worked in absolute 
harmony on every important question of policy 
which arose. The prevention of blackmail and 



Administering New York Police 179 

corruption, the repression of crime and violence, 
safeguarding of life and property, securing honest 
elections, and rewarding efficient and punishing 
inefficient police service, are not, and cannot 
properly be made, questions of party difference. 
In other words, such a body as the police force of 
New York can be wisely and properly adminis- 
tered only upon a non-partisan basis, and both 
Mr. Andrews and myself were quite incapable of 
managing it on any other. There were many men 
who helped us in our work ; and among them all, 
the man who helped us most, by advice and coun- 
sel, by stalwart, loyal friendship, and by ardent 
championship of all that was good against all that 
was evil, was Jacob A. Riis, the author of How 
the Other Half Lives. 

Certain of the difficulties we had to face were 
merely those which confronted the entire reform 
administration in its management of the munici- 
pality. Many worthy people expected that this 
reform administration would work an absolute 
revolution, not merely in the government, but in 
the minds of the citizens as a whole ; and felt 
vaguely that they had been cheated because there 
was not an immediate cleansing of every bad in- 
fluence in civic or social life. Moreover, the differ- 
ent bodies forming the victorious coalition felt the 
pressure of conflicting interests and hopes. The 
mass of effective strength was given by the 



i8o American Ideals 

Republican organization, and not only all the 
enrolled party workers, but a great number of 
well-meaning Republicans who had no personal 
interest at stake, expected the administration to 
be used to further the fortunes of their own party. 
Another great body of the administration's sup- 
porters took a diametrically opposite view, and 
believed that the administration should be ad- 
ministered without the least reference whatever 
to party. In theory they were quite right, and I 
cordially sympathized with them ; but as a matter 
of fact the victory could not have been won by the 
votes of this class of people alone, and it was out 
of the question to put these theories into complete 
effect. Like all other men who actually try to do 
things instead of confining themselves to saying 
how they should be done, the members of the new 
city government were obliged to face the facts and 
to do the best they could in the effort to get some 
kind of good result out of the conflicting forces. 
They had to disregard party so far as was possible ; 
and yet they could not afford to disregard all party 
connections so utterly as to bring the whole ad- 
ministration to grief. 

In addition to these two large groups of sup- 
porters of the administration, there were other 
groups, also possessing influence who expected to 
receive recognition distinctly as Democrats, but as 
anti-Tammany Democrats ; and such members of 



Administering New York Police iSi 

any victorious coalition are always sure to over- 
estimate their own services, and to feel ill-treated. 
It is of course an easy thing to show on paper 
that the municipal administration should have 
been administered without the slightest reference 
to national party lines, and if the bulk of the peo- 
ple saw things with entire clearness the truth 
would seem so obvious as to need no demonstra- 
tion. But as a matter of fact the bulk of the peo- 
ple who voted the new administration into power 
neither saw this nor realized it, and in poHtics, as 
in life generally, conditions must be faced as they 
are, and not as they ought to be. The regular 
Democratic organization, not only in the city but 
in the State, was completely under the dominion of 
Tammany Hall and its allies, and they fought us at 
every step with wholly unscrupulous hatred. In 
the State and the city alike the Democratic cam- 
paign was waged against the reform administra- 
tion in New York. The Tammany officials who 
were still left in power in the city, headed by 
the comptroller, Mr. Fitch, did everything in their 
power to prevent the efficient administration of 
the government. The Democratic members of the 
Legislature acted as their faithful allies in all such 
efforts. Whatever was accomplished by the re- 
form administration — and a very great deal was 
accomplished — was due to the action of the Repub- 
lican majority in the constitutional convention, 



1 82 American Ideals 

and especially to the Republican Governor, Mr. 
Morton, and the Republican majority in the 
Legislature, who enacted laws giving to the newly 
chosen Mayor, Mr. Strong, the great powers neces- 
sary for properly administering his office. With- 
out these laws the Mayor would have been very 
nearly powerless. He certainly could not have 
done a tenth part of what actually was done. 

Now, of course, the Republican politicians who 
gave Mayor Strong all these powers, in the teeth 
of violent Democratic opposition to every law for 
the betterment of civic conditions in New York, 
ought not, under ideal conditions, to have ex- 
pected the slightest reward. They should have 
been contented with showing the public that their 
only purpose was to serve the public, and that the 
Republican party wished no better reward than 
the consciousness of having done its duty by the 
State and the city. But as a whole they had not 
reached such a standard. There were some who 
had reached it; there were others who, though 
perfectly honest, and wishing to see good govern- 
ment prosper, yet felt that somehow it ought to 
be combined with party advantage of a tangible 
sort ; and finally, there were yet others who were 
not honest at all and cared nothing for the victory 
unless it resulted in some way to their own per- 
sonal advantage. In short, the problem pre- 
sented was of the kind which usually is presented 



Administering New York Police 183 

when dealing with men as a mass. The Mayor 
and his administration had to keep in touch with 
the RepubHcan party or they could have accom- 
plished nothing ; and on the other hand there was 
much that the Republican machine asked which 
they could not do, because a surrender on certain 
vital points meant the abandonment of the effort 
to obtain good administration. 

The undesirability of breaking with the Republi- 
can organization was shown by what happened in 
the administration of the police department. This 
being the great centre of power was the especial 
object of the Republican machine leaders. To- 
ward the close of Tammany rule, of the four 
police commissioners, two had been machine 
Republicans, whose actions were in no wise to 
be distinguished from those of their Tammany 
colleagues ; and immediately after the new board 
was appointed to office the machine got through 
the Legislature the so-called bi-partisan or Lexow 
law, under which the department is at present 
administered; and a more foolish or vicious law 
was never enacted by any legislative body. It 
modelled the government of the police force some- 
what on the lines of the PoHsh Parliament, and it 
was avowedly designed to make it difficult to get 
effective action. It provided for a four-headed 
board, so that it was difficult to get a majority 
anyhow ; but, lest we should get such a majority. 



1 84 American Ideals 

it gave each member power to veto the actions of 
his colleagues in certain very important matters; 
and, lest we should do too much when we were 
imanimous, it provided that the chief, our nominal 
subordinate, should have entirely independent 
action in the most important matters, and should 
be practically irremovable, except for proved cor- 
ruption; so that he was responsible to nobody. 
The Mayor was similarly hindered from removing 
any police commissioner, so that when one of our 
colleagues began obstructing the work of the 
board, and thwarting its effort to reform the 
force, the Mayor in vain strove to turn him out. 
In short, there was a complete divorce of power 
and responsibility, and it was exceedingly difficult 
either to do anything, or to place anywhere, the 
responsibility for not doing it. 

If, by any reasonable concessions — if, indeed, by 
the performance of any act not incompatible with 
our oaths of office, we could have stood on good 
terms with the machine, we would certainly have 
made the effort, even at the cost of sacrificing 
many of our ideals; and in almost any other de- 
partment we could probably have avoided a break, 
but in the police force such a compromise was not 
possible. What was demanded of us usually took 
some such form as the refusal to enforce certain 
laws, or the protection of certain law-breakers, 
or the promotion of the least fit men to positions 



Administering New York Police 185 

of high power and grave responsibility; and on 
such points it was not possible to yield. We were 
obliged to treat all questions that arose purely on 
their merits, without reference to the desires of the 
politicians. We went into this course with our 
eyes open, for we knew the trouble it would cause 
us personally, and, what was far more important, 
the way in which our efforts for reform would 
consequently be hampered. However, there was 
no alternative, and we had to abide by the result. 
We had counted the cost before we adopted our 
course, and we followed it resolutely to the end. 
We could not accomplish all that we should have 
liked to accomplish, for we were shackled by pre- 
posterous legislation, and by the opposition and 
intrigues of the basest machine politicians, which 
cost us the support, sometimes of one, and some- 
times of both, of our colleagues. Nevertheless, 
the net result of our two years of work was that 
we did more to increase the efficiency and honesty 
of the police department than had ever previously 
been done in its history. 

But a decent people will have to show by em- 
phatic action that they are in the majority if they 
wish this result to be permanent; for under such 
a law as the "bi-partisan " law it is almost impossi- 
ble to keep the department honest and efficient for 
any length of time ; and the machine politicians, 
by their opposition outside the board, and by the 



i86 American Ideals 

aid of any tool or ally whom they can get on the 
board, can always hamper and cripple the honest 
members of the board, no matter how resolute and 
able the latter may be, if they do not have an 
aroused and determined public opinion behind 
them. 

Besides suffering, in aggravated form, from the 
difficulties which beset the course of the entire 
administration, the police board had to encounter 
— and honest and efficient police boards must 
always encounter — certain special and peculiar 
difficulties. It is not a pleasant thing to deal with 
criminals and purveyors of vice. It is very rough 
work, and it cannot always be done in a nice man- 
ner. The man with the night-stick, the man in 
the blue coat with the helmet, can keep order and 
repress open violence on the streets; but most 
kinds of crime and vice are ordinarily carried on 
furtively and by stealth — perhaps at night, per- 
haps behind closed doors. It is possible to reach 
them only by the employment of the man in plain 
clothes, the detective. Now the function of the 
detective is primarily that of the spy, and it is 
always easy to arouse feeling against a spy. It is 
absolutely necessary to employ him. Ninety per 
cent, of the most dangerous criminals and pur- 
veyors of vice cannot be reached in any other way. 
But the average citizen who does not think deeply 
fails to realize the necessity for any such employ- 



Administering New York Police 187 

ment. In a vague way he desires vice and crime 
put down ; but, also in a vague way, he objects to 
the only possible means by which they can be put 
down. It is easy to mislead him into denouncing 
what is necessarily done in order to carry out the 
very policy for which he is clamoring. The Tam- 
many officials of New York, headed by the Comp- 
troller, made a systematic effort to excite public 
hostility against the police for their warfare on 
vice. The law-breaking liquor-seller, the keeper 
of disorderly houses, and the gambler, had been 
influential allies of Tammany, and head contribu- 
tors to its campaign chest. Naturally, Tammany 
fought for them; and the effective way in which 
to carry on such a fight was to portray with gross 
exaggeration and misstatement the methods neces- 
sarily employed by every police force which hon- 
estly endeavors to do its work. The methods are 
impleasant, just as the methods employed in any 
surgical operation are unpleasant ; and the Tam- 
many champions were able to arouse more or less 
feeling against the police board for precisely the 
same reason that a century ago it was easy to 
arouse what were called "doctors' mobs" against 
surgeons who cut up dead bodies. In neither case 
is the operation attractive, and it is one which 
readily lends itself to denunciation; but in both 
cases it is necessary if there is a real intention to 
get at the disease. Tammany, of course, found its 



1 88 American Ideals 

best allies in the sensational newspapers. Of all 
the forces that tend for evil in a great city like 
New York, probably none are so potent as the 
sensational papers. Until one has had experience 
with them it is difhcnlt to realize the reckless in- 
difference to truth or decency displayed by papers 
such as the two that have the largest circulation 
in New York City. Scandal forms the breath of 
the nostrils of such papers, and they are quite as 
ready to create as to describe it. To sustain law 
and order is humdrum, and does not readily lend 
itself to flaunting woodcuts ; but if the editor will 
stoop, and make his subordinates stoop, to raking 
the gutters of human depravity, to upholding the 
wrong-doer, and furiously assailing what is up- 
right and honest, he can make money, just as 
other types of pander make it. The man who is 
to do honorable work in any form of civic politics 
must make up his mind (and if he is a man of 
properly robust character he will make it up with- 
out difficulty) to treat the assaults of papers like 
these with absolute indifference, and to go his way 
unheeded. Indeed he will have to make up his 
mind to be criticised, sometimes justly, and more 
often unjustly, even by decent people; and he 
must not be so thin-skinned as to mind such criti- 
cism overmuch. 

In administering the police force we foimd, as 
might be expected, that there was no need of 



Administering New York Police 189 

genius, nor indeed of any very unusual qualities. 
What was needed was the exercise of the plain, 
ordinary virtues, of a rather commonplace type, 
which all good citizens should be expected to 
possess. Common sense, common honesty, cour- 
age, energy, resolution, readiness to learn, and a 
desire to be as pleasant with everybody as was 
compatible with a strict performance of duty — 
these were the qualities most called for. We soon 
found that, in spite of the wide-spread corruption 
which had obtained in the New York police depart- 
ment, the bulk of the men were heartily desirous 
of being honest. There were some who were in- 
curably dishonest, just as there were some who 
had remained decent in spite of terrific tempta- 
tion and pressure; but the great mass came in 
between. Although not possessing the stamina 
to war against corruption when the odds seemed 
well-nigh hopeless, they were nevertheless heartily 
glad to be decent and to welcome the change to a 
system under which they were rewarded for doing 
well, and pimished for doing ill. 

Our methods for restoring order and discipline 
were simple, and indeed so were our methods for 
securing efficiency. We made frequent personal 
inspections, especially at night, turning up any- 
where, at any time. We thus speedily got an idea 
of whom among our upper subordinates we could 
trust and whom we could not. We then proceeded 



I go American Ideals 

to punish those guilty of shortcomings, and to re- 
ward those who did well, refusing to pay any heed 
whatever in either case to anything except the 
man's own character and record. A very few of 
these promotions and dismissals sufficed to show 
our subordinates that at last they were dealing 
with superiors who meant what they said, and that 
the days of political "pull" were over while we 
had the power. The effect was immediate. The 
decent men took heart, and those who were not 
decent feared longer to offend. The morale of 
the entire force improved steadily. 

A similar course was followed in reference to the 
relations between the police and citizens generally. 
There had formerly been much complaint of the 
brutal treatment by police of innocent citizens. 
This was stopped peremptorily by the simple ex- 
pedient of dismissing from the force the first two 
or three men who were found guilty of brutality. 
On the other hand we made the force understand 
that in the event of any emergency requiring them 
to use their weapons against either a mob or an in- 
dividual criminal, the police board backed them up 
without reservation. Our sympathy was for the 
friends, and not the foes, of order. If a mob 
threatened violence we were glad to have the mob 
hurt. If a criminal showed fight we expected the 
officer to use any weapon that was necessary to 
overcome him on the instant ; and even, if it be- 



Administering New York Police 191 

came necessary, to take life. All that the board 
required was to be convinced that the necessity 
really existed. We did not possess a particle of 
that maudlin sympathy for the criminal, disor- 
derly, and lawless classes which is such a particu- 
larly unhealthy sign of social development; and 
we were bound that the improvement in the fight- 
ing efficiency of the police should go hand in hand 
with the improvement in their moral tone. 

To break up the system of blackmail and cor- 
ruption was less easy. It was not at all difficult 
to protect decent people in their rights, and this 
was accomplished at once. But the criminal who 
is blackmailed has a direct interest in paying the 
blackmailer, and it is not easy to get information 
about it. Nevertheless, we put a complete stop 
to most of the blackmail by the simple process of 
rigorously enforcing the laws, not only against 
crime, but against vice. 

It was the enforcement of the liquor law which 
caused most excitement. In New York we suffer 
from the altogether too common tendency to make 
any law which a certain section of the community 
wants, and then to allow that law to be more or 
less of a dead-letter if any other section of the 
community objects to it. The multiplication of 
laws by the Legislature, and their partial enforce- 
ment by the executive authorities, go hand in 
hand, and offer one of the many serious problems 



192 American Ideals 

with which we are confronted in striving to bet- 
ter civic conditions. New York State felt that 
Hquor should not be sold on Sunday. ■ The larger 
part of New York City wished to drink liquor on 
Sunday, Any man who studies the social con- 
dition of the poor knows that liquor works more 
ruin than any other one cause. He knows also, 
however, that it is simply impracticable to extir- 
pate the habit entirely, and that to attempt too 
much often merely results in accomplishing too 
little; and he knows, moreover, that for a man 
alone to drink whiskey in a bar-room is one thing, 
and for men with their families to drink light 
wines or beer in respectable restaurants is quite 
a different thing. The average citizen, who 
does n't think at all, and the average politician of 
the baser sort, who only thinks about his own 
personal advantage, find it easiest to disregard 
these facts, and to pass a liquor law which will 
please the temperance people, and then trust to 
the police department to enforce it with such 
laxity as to please the intemperate. 

The results of this pleasing system were evident 
in New York when our board came into power. 
The Sunday liquor law was by no means a dead- 
letter in New York City. On the contrary no less 
than eight thousand arrests for its violation had 
been made under the Tammany regime the year 
before we came in. It was very much alive ; but 



Administering New York Police 193 

it was only executed against those who either had 
no poHtical pull, or who refused to pay money. 
The liquor business does not stand on the same 
footing with other occupations. It always tends 
to produce criminality in the population at large, 
and law-breaking among the saloon-keepers them- 
selves. It is absolutely necessary to supervise it 
rigidly, and impose restrictions upon the traffic. 
In large cities the traffic cannot be stopped ; but 
the evils can at least be minimized. 

In New York the saloon-keepers have always 
stood high among professional politicians. Nearly 
two thirds of the political leaders of Tammany 
Hall have, at one time or another, been in the 
liquor business. The saloon is the natural club and 
meeting-place for the ward heelers and leaders, 
and the bar-room politician is one of the most 
common and best recognized factors, in local 
political government. The saloon-keepers are 
always hand in glove with the professional poli- 
ticians, and occupy towards them a position such 
as is not held by any other class of men. The 
influence they wield in local politics has always 
been very great, and until our board took office 
no man ever dared seriously to threaten them for 
their flagrant violations of the law. The powerful 
and influential saloon-keeper was glad to see his 
neighbors closed, for it gave him business. On 
the other hand, a corrupt police captain, or the 

VOL. I.— 13. 



194 American Ideals 

corrupt politician who controlled him, could 
always extort money from a saloon-keeper by 
threatening to close him and let his neighbor re- 
main open. Gradually the greed of corrupt police 
officials and of corrupt poHticians, grew by what 
it fed on, until they began to blackmail all but the 
very most influential Hquor-sellers ; and as Hquor- 
sellers were very numerous, and the profits of the 
liquor business great, the amount collected was 
enormous. 

The reputable saloon-keepers themselves found 
this condition of blackmail and political favorit- 
ism almost intolerable. The law which we found 
on the statute books had been put on by a Tam- 
many Legislature three years before we took 
office. A couple of months after we took office, 
Mr. J. P. Smith, the editor of the Hquor-dealers' 
organ. The Wine and Spirit Gazette, gave out the 
following interview, which is of- such an extra- 
ordinary character, that I insert it almost in 
full: 

" Governor Flower, as well as the Legislature of 
1892, was elected upon distinct pledges that relief 
would be given by the Democratic party to the 
hquor-dealers, especially of the cities of the State. 
In accordance with this promise a Sunday-opening 
clause was inserted in the excise bill of 1892. 
Governor Flower then said that he could not ap- 
prove the Sunday-opening clause ; whereupon the 



Administering New York Police 195 

Liquor Dealers' Association, which had charge of 
the bill, struck the Sunday-opening clause out. 
After Governor Hill had been elected for the 
second term I had several interviews with him 
on that very subject. He told me : * You know I 
am the friend of the liquor-dealers and will go to 
almost any length to help them and give them 
relief; but do not ask me to recommend to the 
Legislature the passage of the law opening the 
saloons on Sunday. I cannot do it, for it would 
ruin the Democratic party in the State.' He gave 
the same interview to various members of the 
State Liquor Dealers' Association, who waited 
upon him for the purpose of getting relief from the 
blackmail of the police, stating that the lack of 
having the Sunday question properly regulated 
was at the bottom of the trouble. Blackmail had 
been brought to such a state of perfection, and had 
become so oppressive to the liquor-dealers them- 
selves, that they communicated first with Gover- 
nor Hill and then with Mr. Croker. The Wine 
and Spirit Gazette had taken up the subject be- 
cause of gross discrimination made by the police 
in the enforcement of the Sunday-closing law. 
The paper again and again called upon the police 
commissioners to either uniformly enforce the law 
or uniformly disregard it. A committee of the 
Central Association of Liquor Dealers of this city 
then took up the matter and called upon Police 



196 American Ideals 

Commissioner Martin.^ An agreement was then 
made between the leaders of Tammany Hall and the 
liquor-dealers, according to which the monthly black- 
mail paid to the police should be discontinued in 
return for political support.^ In other words, the 
retail dealers should bind themselves to solidly 
support the Tammany ticket in consideration of 
the discontinuance of the monthly blackmail by 
the police. This agreement was carried out. Now 
what was the consequence? If the liquor-dealer, 
after the monthly blackmail ceased, showed any 
signs of independence, the Tammany Hall district 
leader would give the tip to the police captain, 
and that man would be pulled and arrested on the 
following Sunday." 

Continuing, Mr, Smith inveighed against the 
law, but said: 

"The (present) police commissioners are hon- 
estly endeavoring to have the law impartially 
carried out. They are no respecters of persons. 
And our information from all classes of liquor- 
dealers is that the rich and the poor, the influential 
and the uninfluential, are required equally to 
obey the law." 

There is really some difficulty in commenting 
upon the statements of this interview, statements 
which were never denied. 

1 My predecessor in the presidency of the police board. 

2 The italics are my own. 



Administering New York Police 197 

The law was not in the least a dead-letter; it 
was enforced, but it was corruptly and partially- 
enforced. It was a prominent factor in the Tam- 
many scheme of government. It afforded a most 
effective means for blackmailing a large portion of 
the liquor-sellers and for the wholesale corruption 
of the police department. The high Tammany 
officials and the police captains and patrolmen 
blackmailed and bullied the small liquor-sellers 
without a pull, and turned them into abject slaves 
of Tammany Hall. On the other hand, the 
wealthy and politically influential liquor-sellers 
controlled the police, and made or marred cap- 
tains, sergeants, and patrolmen at their pleasure. 
In some of the precincts most of the saloons were 
closed ; in others almost all were open. The rich 
and powerful liquor-seller violated the law at will, 
unless he had fallen under the ban of the police or 
the ward boss, when he was not allowed to violate 
it at all. 

Under these circumstances the new police board 
had one of two courses to follow. We could either 
instruct the police to allow all the saloon-keepers 
to become law-breakers, or else we could instruct 
them to allow none to be law-breakers. We fol- 
lowed the latter course, because we had some re- 
gard for our oaths of office. For two or three 
months we had a regular fight, and on Sundays 
had to employ half the force to enforce the liquor 



iqS American Ideals 

law ; for the Tammany legislators had drawTi the 
law so as to m.ake it easy of enforcement for pur- 
poses of blackmail, but not easy of enforcement 
generally, certain proxdsions being dehberately in- 
serted with the intention to make it difficult of 
universal execution. However, when once the 
Hquor-sellers and their aUies understood that we 
had not the slightest intention of being bullied, 
threatened, or cajoled out of following the course 
which we had laid down, resistance practically 
ceased. During the year after we took office the 
number of arrests for violation of the Sunday 
Hquor law sank to about one half of what they 
had been during the last year of the Tammany 
rule ; and yet the saloons were practically closed, 
whereas imder Tammany most of them had been 
open. We adopted no new methods, save in so 
far as honesty could be called a new method. We 
did not enforce the law with unusual severity ; we 
merely enforced it against the man with a pull, 
just as much as against the man without a pull. 
We refused to discriminate in favor of influential 
law-breakers. The professional politicians of low 
type, the liquor-sellers, the editors of some German 
newspapers, and the sensational press generally, 
attacked us with a ferocity which really verged on 
insanity. 

We went our way without regarding this oppo- 
sition, and gave a very wholesome lesson to the 



Administering New York Police 199 

effect that a law should not be put on the statute 
books if it was not meant to be enforced, and that 
even an excise law could be honestly enforced in 
New York if the public officials so desired. The 
rich brewers and liquor-sellers, who had made 
money hand over fist by violating the excise law 
with the corrupt connivance of the police, raved 
with anger, and every corrupt politician and news- 
paper in the city gave them clamorous assistance ; 
but the poor man, and notably the poor man's 
wife and children, benefited very greatly by what 
we did. The hospital surgeons found that their 
Monday labors were lessened by nearly one half, 
owing to the startling diminution in cases of injury 
due to drunken brawls; the work of the magis- 
trates who sat in the city courts on Monday for the 
trial of the offenders of the preceding twenty-four 
hours was correspondingly decreased ; while many 
a tenement-house family spent Sunday in the 
country, because for the first time the head of the 
family could not use up his money in getting 
drunk. The one all-important element in good 
citizenship in our country is obedience to law, and 
nothing is more needed than the resolute enforce- 
ment of law. This we gave. 

There was no species of mendacity to which our 
opponents did not resort in the effort to break us 
down in our purpose. For weeks they eagerly 
repeated the tale that the saloons were as wide 



200 American Ideals 

open as ever; but they finally abandoned this 
when the counsel for the Liquor Dealers' Associa- 
tion admitted in open court, at the time when we 
secured the conviction of thirty of his clients and 
thereby brought the fight to an end, that over 
nine tenths of the liquor-dealers had been rendered 
bankrupt because we had stopped that illegal 
trade which gave them the best portion of their 
revenue. They then took the line that by devot- 
ing our attention to enforcing the liquor law we 
permitted crime to increase. This, of course, of- 
fered a very congenial field for newspapers like 
the World, which exploited it to the utmost; all 
the more readily since the mere reiteration of the 
falsehood tended to encourage criminals, and so to 
make it not a falsehood. For a time the cry was 
not without influence, even with decent people, 
especially if they belonged to the class of the timid 
rich ; but it simply was n't true, and so this bubble 
went down-stream with the others. For six or 
eight months the cry grew, first louder, then lower ; 
and then it died away. A commentary upon its 
accuracy was furnished toward the end of our ad- 
ministration ; for in February, 1897, the Judge 
who addressed the grand jury of the month was 
able to congratulate them upon the fact that there 
was at that time less crime in New York relatively 
to the population than ever before ; and this held 
true for our two-years' service. 



Administering New York Police 201 

In reorganizing the force the board had to 
make, and did make, more promotions, more ap- 
pointments, and more dismissals than had ever 
before been made in the same length of time. We 
were so hampered by the law that we were not able 
to dismiss many of the men whom we should have 
dismissed, but we did turn out two hundred men 
— more than four times as many as had ever been 
turned out in the same length of time before ; all 
of them being dismissed after formal trial, and 
after having been given full opportunity to be 
heard in their own defence. We appointed about 
seventeen himdred men all told— again more than 
four times as many as ever before; for we were 
allowed a large increase of the police force by law. 
We made 130 promotions; more than had been 
made in the six preceding years. 

All this work was done in strictest accord with 
what we have grown to speak of as the principles 
of civil-service reform. In making dismissals we 
paid heed merely to the man's efficiency and past 
record, refusing to consider outside pressure ; under 
the old regime no policeman with sufficient influ- 
ence behind him was ever dismissed, no matter 
what his offence. In making promotions we took 
into account not only the man's general record, 
his faithfulness, industry, and vigilance, but also 
his personal prowess as shown in any special feat 
of daring, whether in the arresting of criminals or 



202 American Ideals 

in the saving of life — for the police service is 
military in character, and we wished to encourage 
the mihtary virtues. In making appointments we 
found that it was practicable to employ a system 
of rigid competitive examinations, which, as finally 
perfected, combined a very severe physical ex- 
amination with a mental examination such as 
could be passed by any man who had attended one 
of our public schools. Of course, there was also a 
rigid investigation of character. Theorists have 
often sneered at civil-service reform as "impracti- 
cable"; and I am very far from asserting that 
written competitive examinations are always ap- 
plicable, or that they may not sometimes be merely 
stop-gaps, used only because they are better than 
the methods of appointing through political en- 
dorsement ; but most certainly the system worked 
admirably in the police department. We got the 
best lot of recruits for patrolmen that had ever 
been obtained in the history of the force, and we 
did just as well in our examinations for matrons 
and police surgeons. The uplifting of the force 
was very noticeable, both physically and mentally. 
The best men we got were those who had served 
for three years or so in the Army or Navy. Next 
to these came the railroad men. One noticeable 
feature of the work was that we greatly raised the 
proportion of native-bom, until, of the last hun- 
dred appointed, ninety-four per cent, were Ameri- 



Administering- New York Police 203 



cans by birth. Not once in a hundred times did 
we know the pohtics of the appointee, and we paid 
as little heed to this as to their religion. 

Another of our important tasks was seeing that 
the elections were carried on honestly. Under the 
old Tammany rule the cheating was gross and 
flagrant, and the police were often deliberately 
used to facilitate fraudulent practices at the polls. 
This came about in part from the very low charac- 
ter of the men put in as election officers. By con- 
ducting a written examination of the latter, and 
supplementing this by a careful inquiry into their 
character, in which we invited any decent out- 
siders to assist, we very distinctly raised their 
calibre. To show how necessary our examinations 
were, I may mention that before each election held 
imder us we were obliged to reject, for moral or 
mental shortcomings, over a thousand of the men 
whom the regular party organizations, exercising 
their legal rights, proposed as election officers. 
We then merely had to make the police thoroughly 
understand that their sole duty was to guarantee 
an honest election, and that they would be pun- 
ished with the utmost rigor if they interfered with 
honest citizens on the one hand, or failed to pre- 
vent fraud and violence on the other. The result 
was that the elections of 1895 and 1896 were by 
far the most honest and orderly ever held in New 
York City. 



204 American Ideals 

There were a number of other ways in which we 
sought to reform the police force, less important, 
and nevertheless very important. We paid par- 
ticular heed to putting a premium on specially 
meritorious conduct, by awarding certificates of 
honorable mention, and medals, where we were 
unable to promote. We introduced a system of 
pistol practice by which, for the first time, the 
policemen were brought to a reasonable standard 
of efficiency in handling their revolvers. The 
Bertillon system for the identification of crim- 
inals was introduced, A bicycle squad was or- 
ganized with remarkable results, this squad 
speedily becoming a kind of corps d' elite, whose 
individual members distinguished themselves not 
only by their devotion to duty, but by repeated 
exhibitions of remarkable daring and skill. One 
important bit of reform was abolishing the tramp 
lodging-houses, which had originally been started 
in the police stations, in a spirit of unwise philan- 
thropy. These tramp lodging-houses, not being 
properly supervised, were mere nurseries for pau- 
perism and crime, tramps and loafers of every 
shade thronging to the city every winter to enjoy 
their benefits. We abolished them, a municipal 
lodging-house being substituted. Here all home- 
less wanderers were received, forced to bathe, 
given night-clothes before going to bed, and made 
to work next morning ; and, in addition, they were 



Administering New York Police 205 

so closely supervised that habitual tramps and 
vagrants were speedily detected and apprehended. 
There was a striking increase in the honesty of 
the force, and there was a like increase in its effi- 
ciency. When we took office it is not too much to 
say that the great majority of the citizens of New 
York were firmly convinced that no police force 
could be both honest and efficient. They felt it 
to be part of the necessary order of things that a 
policeman should be corrupt, and they were con- 
vinced that the most efficient way of warring 
against certain forms of crime — notably crimes 
against person and property — was by enlisting 
the service of other criminals, and of purveyors of 
vice generally, giving them immunity in return for 
their aid. Before we took power the ordinary 
purveyor of vice was allowed to ply his or her 
trade unmolested, partly in consideration of pay- 
ing blackmail to the police, partly in consideration 
of giving information about any criminal who be- 
longed to the unprotected classes. We at once 
broke up this whole business of blackmail and 
protection, and made war upon all criminals alike, 
instead of getting the assistance of half in warring 
on the other half. Nevertheless, so great was the 
improvement in the spirit of the force, that, 
although deprived of their former vicious allies, 
they actually did better work than ever before 
against those criminals who threatened life and 



2o6 American Ideals 

property. Relatively to the population, fewer 
crimes of violence occurred during our adminis- 
tration of the board than in any previous two 
years of the city's history in recent times ; and the 
total number of arrests of criminals increased, 
while the number of cases in which no arrest fol- 
lowed the commission of crime decreased. The 
detective bureau nearly doubled the number of 
arrests made compared with the year before we 
took office; obtaining, moreover, 365 convictions 
of felons and 215 convictions for misdemeanors, as 
against 269 and 105 respectively for the previous 
year. At the same time every attempt at riot or 
disorder was summarily checked, and all gangs 
of violent criminals brought into immediate sub- 
jection; while on the other hand the immense 
mass meetings and political parades were handled 
with such care that not a single case of clubbing 
of an innocent citizen was reported. 

The result of our labors was of value to the city, 
for we gave the citizens better protection than 
they had ever before received, and at the same 
time cut out the corruption which was eating 
away civic morality. We showed conclusively 
that it was possible to combine both honesty and 
efficiency in handling the police. We were at- 
tacked with the most bitter animosity by every 
sensational newspaper and every politician of the 
baser sort, not because of our shortcomings, but 



Administering New York Police 207 

because of what we did that was good. We en- 
forced the laws as they were on the statute books, 
we broke up blackmail, we kept down the spirit of 
disorder, and repressed rascality, and we ad- 
ministered the force with an eye single to the wel- 
fare of the city. In doing this we encountered, as 
we had expected, the venomous opposition of all 
men whose interest it was that corruption should 
continue, or who were of such dull morality that 
they were not willing to see honesty triumph at 
the cost of strife. 

END OF VOLUME I. 



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